True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 402: Sparks 2
Aired: 2024-09-05
Duration: 01:35:29


=== Labor Day Greetings (08:59) ===

[00:00:00]  Salav de la la min.
[00:00:03]  Are you speaking Kurdish to me?
[00:00:09]  Wait, keep it going.
[00:00:12]  Chawa.
[00:00:14]  Yeah, keep going.
[00:00:15]  I have no idea what you're saying.
[00:00:16]  Hari, chowa.
[00:00:17]  Uh-huh.
[00:00:19]  What's up?
[00:00:20]  Tunazani?
[00:00:21]  Liz?
[00:00:22]  No, no, no.
[00:00:23]  Wait, no, this is how they do it.
[00:00:24]  They don't say no.
[00:00:25]  They go, it's crazy.
[00:00:27]  It makes you really mad at first.
[00:00:28]  But they go, I'm not going to start doing that to you.
[00:00:31]  Also, that would be really offensive on audio.
[00:00:33]  But nothing.
[00:01:10]  That was me saying, you don't know?
[00:01:12]  Oh.
[00:01:13]  You don't know?
[00:01:14]  Oh, and then I got it.
[00:01:14]  And then I, yeah, yeah.
[00:01:16]  Okay.
[00:01:17]  But I said, hello, my dear.
[00:01:18]  You know.
[00:01:19]  Good afternoon, my friend.
[00:01:20]  And you know why that worked and why I can understand?
[00:01:22]  Because love, you don't need a language.
[00:01:24]  It is fucking universal.
[00:01:26]  It is universal.
[00:01:27]  Everyone can understand it.
[00:01:29]  Because it's all about that.
[00:01:31]  Like at the end of the day, like politics aside, whatever, economics aside, everything is all about love.
[00:01:37]  Stuck in your hands.
[00:01:40]  The thing is that, dear listener, why did I say that?
[00:01:43]  That you have to understand is that Frays will just go into much like a yogi who just like falls into poses to be comfortable.
[00:01:53]  He falls in his hands, just will start tenting themselves almost.
[00:01:59]  Like on the subway, you glance over and he's tenting.
[00:02:04]  I think people think that's all an act, but this is how I am.
[00:02:07]  Well, the thing is, so you memed yourself into now doing it.
[00:02:12]  This is also how people join religions.
[00:02:14]  Liz, though.
[00:02:14]  They just start going and then suddenly they find themselves believing.
[00:02:17]  And this is what has happened to you with tenting.
[00:02:20]  But here's the thing.
[00:02:20]  Maybe they're investigating that religion and they find out that that God is real or that God is real.
[00:02:25]  What happened to me is I started tenting my fingers and then I realized it actually does make you more powerful.
[00:02:30]  I'm serious.
[00:02:31]  This is the 10 finger challenge.
[00:02:32]  I think you just like, I think it makes you feel comfortable.
[00:02:36]  I can see it.
[00:02:37]  It's not under the table.
[00:02:38]  It is more comfortable.
[00:02:39]  It is more comfortable and it makes people uncomfortable.
[00:02:41]  Listeners, we're doing the 10 finger challenge.
[00:02:44]  I want you in all of your business dealings, and that is the most use the most expansive definition of that as you possibly can.
[00:02:51]  In all of your business dealings, I want you to start from a place of tented finger, sort of betwixt the nipples.
[00:02:58]  Chest high.
[00:02:59]  Chest high, but twixt.
[00:03:02]  Well, you don't know what people are working with.
[00:03:04]  That's true.
[00:03:04]  Some people could have, I knew a guy, Rat Dick, who had three nipples, which is true.
[00:03:08]  And we did pierce it.
[00:03:09]  We pierced two guys' nipples.
[00:03:11]  Okay, keep them.
[00:03:11]  Third nipple.
[00:03:12]  But and then when you talk to somebody, remove one hand from the tent and sort of point it at them, but keep it in tent formations too.
[00:03:20]  But sort of like do an open-hand point when you're talking to them.
[00:03:23]  It makes people so uncomfortable, which puts you in the superior position.
[00:03:28]  In the driver's seat.
[00:03:28]  In the driver's seat, which we would all like to be in.
[00:03:32]  Hello, Liz.
[00:03:32]  Hello, Brace.
[00:03:34]  Wait, I'm Liz.
[00:03:35]  That's Brace.
[00:03:36]  Navamin, Brace.
[00:03:38]  Joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[00:03:40]  And this is Truanon.
[00:03:42]  Hello.
[00:03:43]  Hello.
[00:03:44]  So, this listeners, I should have you guys know that I relapsed.
[00:03:49]  Dairy or booze?
[00:03:51]  Because we're talking about both today.
[00:03:53]  I relapsed on.
[00:03:54]  I've been drinking so much go-gurt.
[00:03:57]  Liquor milk.
[00:03:58]  Go-gurt.
[00:03:59]  Yeah, I've been drinking go-gurt with a little bit of buzzball in it.
[00:04:02]  And I have been.
[00:04:04]  No, no, you pour the go-gurt in the buzzball.
[00:04:07]  So then you can slosh it around like globe-like.
[00:04:10]  You can twirl it on your finger like a globetrotter.
[00:04:14]  Do you see where I'm going with this?
[00:04:16]  I wish you could eat.
[00:04:17]  I wish you could eat liquor like honey, like Winnie the Pooh eats honey with just.
[00:04:20]  Like Globichar style.
[00:04:21]  Yeah, it's in a big pot that you carry with you, and you scoop the liquor.
[00:04:25]  Every time I see that woman, all I think of is honey pot, honey pot, Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh.
[00:04:30]  Shout out to the listener who sent us the.
[00:04:32]  And if you don't know what we're talking about, you are not a subscriber and you don't know.
[00:04:36]  And so you don't get to know because that was on a tip line episode.
[00:04:41]  There's two kinds of people in this world, as Liz always says, but I disagree with the people who are subscribed to Truanon, and then people who are not subscribed to fucking Truanon.
[00:04:53]  Which one are you?
[00:04:54]  It's an interesting question to ask yourself.
[00:04:56]  This is a free episode.
[00:04:58]  It is.
[00:04:59]  And in the spirit of, did you have a nice Labor Day?
[00:05:03]  I did have a Nice Labor Day.
[00:05:04]  Yeah, I did have a Nice Labor Day.
[00:05:05]  Did you?
[00:05:06]  I saw from your social posting that you were having a grand old time with what looked like some barbecue ribs.
[00:05:12]  I did.
[00:05:12]  I went up to some fucking Lake Titicaca.
[00:05:15]  All this shit here is named.
[00:05:16]  I'm used to shit just being named Mexican stuff.
[00:05:18]  And so in New York, it's all named like a bunch of letters.
[00:05:22]  But we went up to some lake and went on a little hike and me and some people and then had some barbecue.
[00:05:30]  And then, you know what?
[00:05:31]  Got home at a reasonable hour and I just hung out of my house and did a little work.
[00:05:36]  That's nice.
[00:05:37]  What did you do?
[00:05:38]  I didn't do anything.
[00:05:39]  You knew anything?
[00:05:40]  No, I didn't do anything.
[00:05:42]  You didn't do anything?
[00:05:43]  I did some things that I needed to do.
[00:05:46]  You did chores on Labor Day?
[00:05:48]  Yeah, I did labor.
[00:05:50]  Well, that's not.
[00:05:51]  Labor Day's a fake-ass holiday, anyways.
[00:05:52]  Yeah, it's fake.
[00:05:53]  It's, you know, it's what, you know, the corporation, it's what the man wanted you to have.
[00:05:57]  I've never had a Labor Day off.
[00:05:59]  No, I was like cleaning out my closet and like all everything that I own.
[00:06:03]  Okay.
[00:06:03]  Okay.
[00:06:04]  That's all right.
[00:06:05]  Yeah.
[00:06:05]  I was in a, in a, like, kind of, Tasmanian double.
[00:06:10]  Like that guy was like in my house.
[00:06:12]  I was just like, okay, we're cleaning everything out, getting rid of stuff.
[00:06:16]  It's the Virgo new moon.
[00:06:18]  It's time to kind of like get some things going.
[00:06:21]  Is that good?
[00:06:22]  It's just a thing.
[00:06:23]  Just a thing.
[00:06:24]  Yeah.
[00:06:24]  This is John's Ungrailed.
[00:06:27]  What did you do?
[00:06:28]  Hung out, growth code.
[00:06:31]  Damn, that's crazy.
[00:06:32]  I had a blast.
[00:06:33]  I was in the motherfucking.
[00:06:35]  But I will say this.
[00:06:36]  This is about to sound really racist, and I don't mean it.
[00:06:39]  Well, I do mean it.
[00:06:41]  Bleep whatever he's about to say.
[00:06:42]  No, no, don't believe what I'm about to say.
[00:06:43]  No, Yon Shomsky, hand off the bleep.
[00:06:46]  Can you please bleep it?
[00:06:47]  Because I don't want people hearing this.
[00:06:50]  Yesterday on the hike, I heard, we were in the middle of the woods, and I heard what sounded to me like Israeli music coming from a very loud Bluetooth pill.
[00:07:03]  When you say Israeli, hold on.
[00:07:05]  Do you mean like Masorashi Hashi?
[00:07:09]  Or do you mean Manas Yahoo?
[00:07:11]  Yes, or do you mean like NovaFest?
[00:07:14]  It was NovaFest, but with lyrics in Hebrew.
[00:07:17]  Okay, interesting.
[00:07:18]  And I was with some other people of the book, which people only think that Muslims call Christians, but actually we're all of the book.
[00:07:25]  We just have the first one.
[00:07:27]  And we were like, there's no way.
[00:07:29]  And because we were going to this peak to go sit down and chill and drink some water.
[00:07:34]  And we were like, fuck, we wanted to get there, sit down, look at the view.
[00:07:37]  But sitting at the peak were just these three young Israeli guys, shirtless, just like blasted Israeli EDM hanging out.
[00:07:44]  And we're like, God damn, this is tough.
[00:07:47]  This is tough.
[00:07:48]  You should have joined him.
[00:07:49]  I did.
[00:07:50]  I did.
[00:07:50]  Yeah, I did.
[00:07:51]  I always took him to this little tunnel.
[00:07:54]  But it was a fantastic peak.
[00:07:57]  I love the nature of things.
[00:07:59]  And I saw a bunch of deer.
[00:08:00]  Well, in that spirit, we have a little bit of a Labor Day focused episode.
[00:08:06]  Yeah, you know what?
[00:08:07]  It's a real Labor Day, not this fake one.
[00:08:09]  We have kind of an industry-centric.
[00:08:11]  Oh, I guess this is the first episode of the month, but in my head, it extended to the last episode we did.
[00:08:16]  But we have a kind of industry-centric month so far.
[00:08:20]  Oh, wait, no.
[00:08:21]  Yesterday's came out.
[00:08:22]  The episode came out yesterday, the first of the month.
[00:08:24]  So we're talking about business, and so we have the business of losing.
[00:08:28]  We're all about business.
[00:08:30]  We fucking are, we're America.
[00:08:32]  We're America's foremost Mawa small businessmen.
[00:08:36]  And we just, you know, we're in the little leagues right now, but you know what?
[00:08:41]  Someday will we be Budweiser.
[00:08:43]  Someday will be Compaq.
[00:08:44]  Someday we'll be what other.
[00:08:46]  Let's talk about other companies that aren't around anymore.
[00:08:49]  We will be Skechers.
[00:08:51]  We will be fucking Nike Air Force Ones.
[00:08:53]  Okay, all these things are here.
[00:08:55]  Okay, there we go.
[00:08:55]  We will be NBA.
[00:08:56]  We will be fucking, we will be, what other brands are there?

=== Strikes at Lids (06:19) ===

[00:09:00]  Liz, I need your help.
[00:09:01]  You know hella companies.
[00:09:02]  Lids.
[00:09:03]  Do you think we should collab with Lids?
[00:09:05]  Here's the thing.
[00:09:06]  Can we collab with something?
[00:09:08]  Do you think people are still going to Lids?
[00:09:10]  Yeah, I go to Lids twice a day.
[00:09:12]  I don't think people are buying that many hats.
[00:09:14]  I don't know.
[00:09:15]  I don't know.
[00:09:16]  There's a ceiling on that.
[00:09:17]  A cap.
[00:09:18]  Do you think I should get like a signature old-timey hat that I wear all the time?
[00:09:22]  You have that.
[00:09:23]  You have the cowboy hat.
[00:09:24]  That's how.
[00:09:25]  No, that's different.
[00:09:26]  You mean like a top hat?
[00:09:27]  And I don't wear it all the time.
[00:09:28]  What about like a Lincoln?
[00:09:29]  Like, I'm the pinky blondes.
[00:09:31]  Like a fedora.
[00:09:32]  Are you asking me if you should be a fedora guy?
[00:09:34]  I thought they wore like scally caps.
[00:09:36]  You have one.
[00:09:37]  Oh, yeah.
[00:09:38]  My dad got me a fucking cat.
[00:09:39]  But he kisses.
[00:09:40]  He's going to get mad.
[00:09:41]  But dad, why did you get me the Kangle?
[00:09:43]  I know you listen to the podcast, but it's not just it was what came with the Kangol.
[00:09:47]  Floor-length leather coat.
[00:09:49]  Let's be real.
[00:09:50]  It was a floor-length leather coat.
[00:09:51]  It was a floor-length leather coat.
[00:09:53]  It is still a floor-length leather coat.
[00:09:54]  I wear it sometimes around the house with my, with my hands.
[00:09:57]  You're not going to get your jokes off.
[00:10:00]  No, I wouldn't shoot at my school because he doesn't have one.
[00:10:03]  I don't go to school.
[00:10:05]  And also, I'm not allowed near them because of some false things.
[00:10:09]  Just playing.
[00:10:10]  But guy who wants to shoot up a school, but he can't go near because he spent too much time on Discord.
[00:10:18]  We're talking to Dave.
[00:10:19]  I'm sorry.
[00:10:20]  Sorry, Dave.
[00:10:21]  Sorry, Dave.
[00:10:22]  Once again, apologizing to our guest for this funny sometimes.
[00:10:27]  We got all over the place today, but we're going to reel it back in.
[00:10:30]  We're going to cap the bottle.
[00:10:32]  Of Go-Gurt.
[00:10:33]  Of Go-Gurt.
[00:10:35]  What's the most yogurt you'd think you'd have in one sitting if offered?
[00:10:38]  Like, are we talking in grams?
[00:10:41]  Yeah, grams or ounces of yogurt.
[00:10:43]  Like, how many, like, let me say this.
[00:10:44]  Not that you'd want, because you'd probably just want an oil portion.
[00:10:47]  How much do you think you could eat at the top of your game and you haven't eaten for a day?
[00:10:54]  How much yogurt do you think you could eat in one sitting?
[00:10:56]  Definitely.
[00:10:57]  Easily I could eat just like one of the like large containers.
[00:11:01]  That's like, that's easy.
[00:11:02]  Yeah.
[00:11:03]  So, but I'm trying to think of like.
[00:11:07]  Yeah, the one that you get when you're like, I'm not getting the individual, I'm getting the big.
[00:11:10]  A teener.
[00:11:12]  A lot of yogurt.
[00:11:13]  Yeah, but this is a challenge.
[00:11:15]  Yeah, this is a challenge.
[00:11:16]  I think you're a woman.
[00:11:17]  I mean, I'm a woman.
[00:11:18]  Straight or you're putting stuff in it.
[00:11:20]  Straight.
[00:11:21]  Straight, straight.
[00:11:21]  No, we're not getting fancy with it.
[00:11:23]  I love yogurt.
[00:11:24]  You love yogurt?
[00:11:25]  Yeah.
[00:11:26]  That's crazy.
[00:11:26]  I love people, but that's interesting that you feel that towards products.
[00:11:30]  But I've kind of taken that off of me.
[00:11:32]  Like, I don't feel love towards anything but people now, but I love every person.
[00:11:37]  I'm just kidding.
[00:11:37]  I love lots of things.
[00:11:41]  Ladies and gentlemen, we have Dave Infante.
[00:11:44]  Dave Dino Infante from Fingers, a sub stack, which I subscribe to.
[00:11:51]  Now my turn.
[00:11:52]  Liz is always the one who gets to say that, but I actually read this one.
[00:11:56]  And we're talking about, what are we talking about?
[00:11:59]  We're talking about unions.
[00:12:02]  We're talking about booze.
[00:12:05]  We're talking about dairy.
[00:12:08]  One out of those three things that Brace can partake in.
[00:12:14]  I can't even partake it now because now I'm a fucking CEO.
[00:12:16]  So you can't have any of that shit.
[00:12:18]  It sucks.
[00:12:19]  It feels good being the boss of my various companies, but it sucks that I can no longer talk to workers without calling the cops on them.
[00:12:30]  Let's talk to Dave.
[00:12:32]  Beep, beep, beep.
[00:12:36]  Wait.
[00:12:37]  Hark.
[00:12:39]  Okay, I didn't know how to do this.
[00:12:40]  I said I would, but I didn't know how to do this.
[00:12:42]  We forgot to say, Brace forgot to say something.
[00:12:44]  And so we are actually putting it in right here.
[00:12:46]  Evan, Evan, I know you fucking listen to this.
[00:12:50]  And so I'm sorry for not putting this organically in the episode, but right when we finished recording, I remember I told you I would say this.
[00:12:55]  And also, I believe in this and rock with this.
[00:12:58]  This may well make sense more after this episode, but keep your eyes out for a public pressure campaign on Hamdi Ulukaya.
[00:13:06]  The big yogurt man of Mr. Chobani.
[00:13:08]  Which you'll hear all about very shortly.
[00:13:10]  So keep your eye on that.
[00:13:11]  And within the next month, you might be seeing something.
[00:13:13]  We'll call your attention to that when it happens.
[00:13:15]  However, for now, you know Liz, Alcatraz, The Rock, the big house in the bay.
[00:13:21]  Yeah, my former house.
[00:13:23]  Liz was the only women inmate at The Rock for 50 years until she chewed through hoop bars and escaped like a seal.
[00:13:32]  Well, I swam out.
[00:13:33]  She swam out.
[00:13:34]  Which I got to be honest, doesn't seem that hard.
[00:13:37]  I've always said that.
[00:13:38]  People do it all the time.
[00:13:39]  I think I could do it.
[00:13:40]  I think you could do it too.
[00:13:41]  I think I could do it.
[00:13:42]  Can you swim good?
[00:13:42]  Yes, I'm an excellent swimmer.
[00:13:44]  That's great.
[00:13:45]  I'm just synchronized, all kinds.
[00:13:47]  That's wonderful.
[00:13:48]  Check out this segue.
[00:13:49]  Check out this transition right here.
[00:13:50]  This is why I'm a tech CEO.
[00:13:52]  That's great that you can swim, Liz, because you might have to do that if you want to enter Alcatraz now.
[00:13:58]  Because listen, in the world of boats in the bay, and we're talking about the fucking, we're talking about all these fucking, the fairies of which the Bay Area is known for many.
[00:14:09]  Those are all unionized.
[00:14:12]  Except there was one tough nut that they said could not be cracked.
[00:14:16]  That nut was Alcatraz Fairies.
[00:14:19]  I'm not even joking.
[00:14:20]  It was like, people have tried for a long time to unionize Alcatraz, the boat that goes back and forth and fairies passengers to Alatra.
[00:14:27]  If you want to visit Alcatraz, you got to get on that boat and that boat only.
[00:14:30]  It's a monopoly.
[00:14:31]  Exactly.
[00:14:31]  Exactly.
[00:14:33]  So a certain union, the IBU, Inland Boatman's Union, of which I was a member for about a day, which is a subsidiary of ILWU, which was the place that Anchor was under, has organized these workers.
[00:14:48]  But the company is coming down and doing some freaky, dicky shit.
[00:14:52]  So they have been on strike a bunch recently and are continuing to be on strike.
[00:14:56]  But in order to be on strike, you need a strike fund.
[00:14:58]  And I want to mention that like this strike was authorized by like, it's like 90% or something of these fucking workers.
[00:15:03]  I mean, people really like, they're getting fucked by work.
[00:15:06]  And so they're going on strike, they're picketing, and they need money in order to do that kind of thing.
[00:15:12]  So there will be a link in the bio of this episode for the bio of this episode for that strike fund.
[00:15:18]  And please donate to it.

=== Boom, Boom Comes Your Father (03:26) ===

[00:15:20]  Thank you.
[00:15:35]  Listeners, I want you to go back to your childhood.
[00:15:37]  You're 12 years old.
[00:15:39]  You just got done with your school day.
[00:15:41]  You're a junior in high school because you're really smart.
[00:15:44]  You're in fact a gifted kid.
[00:15:45]  Although you're a little bit physically underdeveloped, it's all good.
[00:15:49]  It'll come.
[00:15:50]  It'll come.
[00:15:51]  Well, it might not, but maybe they could create some serums and stuff.
[00:15:54]  There's always a horizon.
[00:15:55]  TRT.
[00:15:57]  Your backpack, both little things on.
[00:15:59]  You go found from school.
[00:16:00]  It's all cinched up.
[00:16:02]  Really, really circling your armpits there.
[00:16:04]  Oh, I can't wait to get home.
[00:16:06]  Open the door.
[00:16:07]  Put down your homework.
[00:16:08]  Calculus, algebra, algebra two.
[00:16:11]  Calculus, the other ones that they excise from the California curriculum because of DEI.
[00:16:17]  Not my phrase.
[00:16:18]  That is, unfortunately, our guests.
[00:16:21]  You're going to, oh, I do my notes.
[00:16:22]  I do my notes.
[00:16:22]  I can't wait to get for dad to get home from the factory.
[00:16:26]  Hour passes, two-hour passes, three-hour passes, four-hour passes, five-hour passes.
[00:16:30]  Mom is gobbling fucking.
[00:16:33]  What is that?
[00:16:34]  What did they?
[00:16:35]  What is it?
[00:16:36]  No, my brother.
[00:16:38]  She is garbling.
[00:16:40]  She is taking Xanax.
[00:16:42]  No, what's the other one that they had abandoned?
[00:16:44]  No, too many people died.
[00:16:45]  It's an old kind of.
[00:16:46]  No, it's a fucking drug they don't make anymore.
[00:16:48]  Oh, Quailudes.
[00:16:49]  Qualudes.
[00:16:50]  Yes, it's, but what's the class of drugs that Quailudes belongs to?
[00:16:53]  Barbituids.
[00:16:54]  Barbituids.
[00:16:55]  Your mother's taking too many barbituids.
[00:16:57]  She's insensible.
[00:16:58]  I hope my daddy gets home soon.
[00:17:01]  11 p.m.
[00:17:02]  The door creaks open.
[00:17:05]  Boom, boom, boom comes your father.
[00:17:08]  The reek of alcohol coming out of his pores, not only from tonight's drinking, but from all the nights in the past.
[00:17:15]  A acrid stink that comes out of him, burning your nostrils.
[00:17:20]  He sits down on his lazy boy recliner and cracks open a can of Liz?
[00:17:29]  Can euphoric?
[00:17:30]  Kinuphorix.
[00:17:32]  You would put those in the refrigerator in the hopes that your dad might stop drinking so much.
[00:17:36]  He turks one look at this.
[00:17:37]  He says, fuck Bella Hatine.
[00:17:39]  That fucking, that disease she has.
[00:17:41]  She says she has is even fucking real.
[00:17:43]  And he throws it against the wall and goes back into the fridge and takes out a big old 40-ounce of stone malt liquor.
[00:17:50]  He starts drinking, he starts drinking.
[00:17:52]  He opens up the newspaper and you say, Daddy, can you read to me?
[00:17:55]  Can you read to me the Hardy Boys tonight?
[00:17:56]  He's like, No, I'm too busy reading my own thing, this giant newsletter, which is written by Dave Infante.
[00:18:04]  It's called Fingers, an independent newsletter about drinking in America, written by Dave Dino Infante, one of the biggest alcoholics in the contiguous 48.
[00:18:14]  Of course, not including the island of Hawaii and, of course, up north in Alaska, where unfortunately alcoholism does run rampant.
[00:18:21]  Dave, welcome to the show.
[00:18:22]  Wow.
[00:18:23]  Thank you so much for having me.
[00:18:26]  Jeez, the reach of your newsletter is incredible.
[00:18:30]  I read your newsletter.
[00:18:32]  I want to say this right now.
[00:18:33]  That was a cruel introduction, but I am an actual when the emails come, I open and read them.
[00:18:39]  I like to think that whose dad is it?
[00:18:41]  Is it your dad, Bray?
[00:18:42]  Is it my dad in this?
[00:18:44]  It's our collective dad's father.
[00:18:45]  It's our father.

=== Sparks and Steam's Rise (14:13) ===

[00:18:46]  Yeah.
[00:18:46]  Our collective Sparks and Steam employee who comes back blind drunk.
[00:18:51]  I like to think that he is blind drunk because he knows he has to read fingers at the end of the night and he can't.
[00:18:58]  He can't fucking bear it.
[00:19:01]  Before we start on what we're actually talking about, I actually just have some questions for you for my own purposes.
[00:19:06]  Why?
[00:19:07]  What has prevented them from making Sparks 2?
[00:19:09]  So Sparks is energy beer, right?
[00:19:12]  Caffeine plus malt liquor.
[00:19:14]  And there is actually no law that says they can't make it.
[00:19:17]  For Loco never actually got banned.
[00:19:20]  For Loco was pushed off the market by the Food and Drug Administration in 2010, but not because of a statute or even a regulation, just like a strongly worded letter where they saw the writing on the wall.
[00:19:33]  You can try to market an energy beer, and people do to some extent.
[00:19:41]  Like if the caffeine is naturally derived, you'll see like coffee beers and whatever.
[00:19:46]  But there's actually no law against it.
[00:19:48]  Sparks got pulled because Molson Kors and Anheuser-Busch, which had a competing project or product, B to the E.
[00:19:54]  I don't know if you guys remember Budweiser Extra.
[00:19:58]  Yeah.
[00:19:58]  Incredible name.
[00:20:00]  Yeah, I know, right?
[00:20:00]  It was like the last thing that like fail son August Bush IV did before he was like taken, mercifully Hopefully taken out of the leadership chair by the Brazilians who hostile takeover Anheuser-Busch in 2008.
[00:20:15]  But yeah, no, there's actually nothing against it.
[00:20:17]  We could do it.
[00:20:17]  Truinon Sparks.
[00:20:19]  I really, I don't think that we should let the like TikTok zoomers know because that would open up a whole new phase of indie sleaze that I like don't think that anyone is ready for.
[00:20:28]  I actually was briefly in Iowa.
[00:20:30]  I know a guy in LA who makes his own seltzer, alcoholic seltzers at his house.
[00:20:35]  And I had talked to him about restarting Sparks but branded Truanon.
[00:20:40]  And I was like, I feel like we do it in blue and red instead of orange and silver.
[00:20:44]  We just call it Sparks 2.
[00:20:45]  Yeah, obviously.
[00:20:47]  But I unfortunately never followed up on that.
[00:20:49]  Although, if you're listening, maybe perhaps it's time to break into the market.
[00:20:53]  Dave, we have you on the show today to talk about a bit of an ironic development in the craft brewing world.
[00:20:59]  Or I don't even know.
[00:21:00]  Listen, the label of craft brewing, as we know, is an amorphous one.
[00:21:05]  Much like the word irony.
[00:21:07]  Yes, yes.
[00:21:07]  So I'm not sure if this technically qualifies as craft brewing.
[00:21:11]  But Sapporos USA's, or Sapporo Stone's rather, flagship and frankly only brand Stone has had one of their breweries unionized in Richmond, Virginia.
[00:21:24]  It's true.
[00:21:26]  The Richmond brewery here, which was opened by Stone in 2014, it was supposed to be a big part of their eastward push.
[00:21:33]  Obviously, Stone comes from San Diego County.
[00:21:35]  They were kind of a pioneer of craft brewing second wave.
[00:21:39]  They were kind of like the zenith of their success and power in like 2014 when they opened this plant.
[00:21:45]  And then like it all went downhill ever since.
[00:21:48]  But they get acquired in 2022 by Sapporo.
[00:21:52]  And just a week or so before we're recording this episode in early September 2024, the workers at this plant here in Richmond went union with the Teamsters with Teamsters Local 322.
[00:22:09]  So yeah, like you said, Stone is based in San Diego.
[00:22:12]  And so, I mean, from what I always understood, like, it's based there.
[00:22:16]  That's like where their main brewing production facilities are.
[00:22:18]  They have the ones in Richmond as a way to get kegs in a more fresh style variety to bars in the East Coast.
[00:22:25]  Yeah, that was the idea.
[00:22:26]  I mean, like, a lot of these breweries that came out of the West Coast in the 2010s or teens, whatever that decade was called, like, they wanted to push into national distribution.
[00:22:38]  And beer has a shelf life in a way that like wine and spirits really don't.
[00:22:42]  So like you kind of have to be able to produce it relatively close to where you're selling it if you want to sell it as fresh as possible.
[00:22:49]  And this was like a core tenet of the craft brewing value proposition to use the marketing term, right?
[00:22:56]  So they and other breweries pushed east and established like production facilities, big breweries in two of them in Virginia.
[00:23:06]  was uh uh Deschutes came to Virginia, I think in Roanoke.
[00:23:10]  Uh, Stone came to Richmond, and they built these like these huge plants, Constellation, uh, or excuse me, Ballast Point.
[00:23:16]  Remember fucking Ballast Point?
[00:23:17]  Uh, yeah, out of San Diego, yeah, I remember all these names.
[00:23:25]  Yeah, uh, they all came, they moved to the east to expand, and that's kind of when the bottom started falling out of the craft market, and uh, and they were kind of fucked.
[00:23:37]  Um, for our listeners who aren't familiar, which we're going to be saying maybe a couple times on this episode as we're going to go back a little bit, but can you talk a little bit about that bottom falling out in the craft market and the craft brewery?
[00:23:50]  For sure.
[00:23:51]  I also should say it's awesome that you guys let me fucking talk about this bullshit as opposed to the what do they ask on other podcasts?
[00:24:00]  What do you mean?
[00:24:01]  I just very much appreciate you guys letting me, you know, tell your listeners about what's going on in the beer industry these days.
[00:24:09]  It's important.
[00:24:10]  This shit's important.
[00:24:11]  I think this is actually really helpful for our listeners to understand other historical things because a certain other large enterprise pushed to the east many years ago.
[00:24:21]  And because of that, overextending themselves, frankly, the bottom fell out on that project too.
[00:24:25]  That's terrible.
[00:24:26]  But of course, that is the one and only Adolf Hitler in a Nazi Germany.
[00:24:30]  But Dave, so what happened?
[00:24:32]  Because I actually legit, so I just, we'll get to this in a second.
[00:24:35]  I worked in craft brewing.
[00:24:37]  I don't know what a craft brew is.
[00:24:38]  I don't know if I've ever drank one.
[00:24:40]  And I don't know about this stuff.
[00:24:41]  So tell us about it.
[00:24:43]  Why did this happen?
[00:24:44]  What happened?
[00:24:45]  All right.
[00:24:46]  So the craft beer industry hits kind of the mainstream for the first time in the 90s.
[00:24:52]  This is kind of the first wave.
[00:24:54]  And it gets really popular really fast.
[00:24:57]  It's not nearly as big as it is now, but proportionally, it's fucking crazy.
[00:25:01]  All these like kind of hipster-y bearded dudes coming out of the Pacific Northwest with like hoppy, you know, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is huge all of a sudden.
[00:25:12]  Anchor is getting big, you know, all of a sudden has a lot of fans across not just California, but, you know, across the country.
[00:25:22]  And Boston Beer Company is coming at it from the East Coast, of course.
[00:25:27]  They contract brew in Cincinnati and in Pennsylvania, so they're able to get their beer more broadly.
[00:25:34]  Beer starts, craft beer starts getting popular.
[00:25:37]  People like these full-flavored beers.
[00:25:38]  This is kind of like the end of the light beer wars, as they're called, when Miller Light and Bud Light are slugging it out with one another.
[00:25:47]  And Coors Light, shout out to the Coors family, who we talked about last time I was here.
[00:25:51]  We did.
[00:25:52]  Coors Light is just trying to hang on as number three.
[00:25:56]  But that boom gives way to a little bit of a bust in the early aughts.
[00:26:00]  And then right around like 2008, 2009, as like sort of the housing crisis, you know, ebbs a little bit and like that like moment of triage for the international economy sort of recedes a little bit.
[00:26:16]  I don't have like evidence of this, but like there's a lot of breweries that open right around that time.
[00:26:20]  And that's where the second boom really starts to hit.
[00:26:23]  And I think at least in part, it can be explained, you know, like a factor on why that might be is that I think a lot of people who had some access to like family capital or family and friends, investors type of thing, who had just gotten hosed by their corporate jobs would be, you know, decided like, you know what, fuck it.
[00:26:43]  Like I'm going to make a business, you know, a brewery instead.
[00:26:45]  I'm going to build a brewery instead because like they're, you know, everything is kind of fucked right now.
[00:26:50]  And people were drinking a lot.
[00:26:52]  Well, I, you know, I, I, that is also the popular image that I have of it in my head, or I guess it wouldn't be popular.
[00:26:58]  It's the singular image I have of it in my head, the private image is of like a guy who's like in his 50s and he's like, I don't know even what kind of music he listens to, but it's not good, but it's rock-based.
[00:27:09]  And he's like laid off.
[00:27:10]  It's the black keys.
[00:27:10]  The black keys.
[00:27:11]  He loves.
[00:27:12]  Yes.
[00:27:12]  It's the black keys.
[00:27:13]  And he's making a mistake.
[00:27:14]  And he's got his salvage denim.
[00:27:16]  And like the future, it's not bright, but it tastes good as hell.
[00:27:20]  And it's, you know what?
[00:27:21]  It's like time to like get back to American manufacturing.
[00:27:24]  Like we're going to start this in the garage of my let's watch Mumblecore.
[00:27:29]  Let's watch a Mumblecore movie.
[00:27:31]  Completely pass me by.
[00:27:32]  And let's, you know, let's start to chill out.
[00:27:36]  And so like everything, I think it's indicative of like the label choice for a lot of these things.
[00:27:41]  What's the little pilot skeleton with the goggles on its head?
[00:27:44]  Voodoo Ranger.
[00:27:45]  Voodoo Ranger.
[00:27:46]  The Voodoo Ranger is like that.
[00:27:47]  It's that kind of guy.
[00:27:50]  But yeah, they got really big and the craft brew guy became a kind of guy, I feel like, back then.
[00:27:57]  He was right around the 2010s, right?
[00:27:59]  The first sort of like death rattle of like Williamsburg hipsterism that itself a first wave that had kind of played out right around that point.
[00:28:09]  And these were sort of typically white, like upwardly mobile, underemployed, urban dwelling, creative types, quote unquote.
[00:28:20]  You know, craft beer was very urbane at this period.
[00:28:24]  Certainly now we see a lot more breweries in all parts of the country.
[00:28:27]  But like this was a movement not exclusively in America's, you know, sort of like regentrifying cities, but was certainly driven in large part by those hotbeds.
[00:28:38]  Brooklyn Brewery was in Williamsburg itself.
[00:28:41]  You know, Brooklyn Brewer comes along in 1988 and that B logo becomes sort of emblematic of that first wave of hipsters who are kind of returning and gentrifying those areas.
[00:28:54]  So yeah, I mean, like by the time 2010 rolls around, like this is a type of guy for sure.
[00:28:58]  This is, you know, I think it was either the New Yorker Fortune magazine.
[00:29:02]  No, it was the New Yorker.
[00:29:03]  They put an illustration of like the craft beer guy on the, on their cover, which, you know, to the extent that the New Yorker makes culture, and it certainly does in, you know, sort of the more normie liberal quarters of like the media ecosystem.
[00:29:18]  People who spend a lot of times in doctors' offices.
[00:29:22]  Right.
[00:29:23]  Usually they're psychiatrists.
[00:29:24]  Unidentified, unidentifiable like skin issues, you know, rashes and such.
[00:29:31]  Some people have those and they're just normal.
[00:29:33]  But yeah, it becomes like my point is it becomes mainstream.
[00:29:36]  And like, this is a guy.
[00:29:38]  Yeah, for sure.
[00:29:40]  And, and it's popular.
[00:29:41]  Like now it's an easy punching bag and it has been for the last like half decade or so.
[00:29:46]  But it was like unironically like a engine of mainstream white culture at that, you know, for that period in the U.S.
[00:29:54]  Yeah, it became like you, it was like almost like a trope.
[00:29:57]  Like, oh, this guy wants to take me to a craft bar or whatever.
[00:30:00]  And like people drink out of weird glasses and are like, I have mason jar.
[00:30:05]  Oh, God.
[00:30:07]  I love fat bicycle or whatever the fuck that shit was.
[00:30:10]  Yeah.
[00:30:11]  I mean, it's crazy because this stuff, this stuff completely passed me by because my number one thing for looking for a beer to drink would at least be it had to be malt liquor and it had to be the most alcohol by volume, but for price that you could get.
[00:30:26]  And to be fair, you were quite young at this time.
[00:30:28]  Yes.
[00:30:28]  So that would also explain the taste level.
[00:30:31]  But also, Kraken Stan on Mission Street and Shukri's next to Loris Park would sell you beer starting at age 13 and up.
[00:30:38]  But they were sort of grandfathered in, you know?
[00:30:42]  It's funny because I think just thinking about that time period too, like I think the point you make about these like dowardly mobile post like corporate, like kind of blown out guys looking for with like, you know, some family investment, they could start brewery.
[00:30:57]  I feel like that, like in my memory of all of this, like checks out, makes total sense.
[00:31:03]  And I also feel like they somehow brought with them the sensibilities of like bespoke cocktailery, which sort of predated this kind of wave of craft brewery.
[00:31:14]  Like they were bringing, like you just saying, like, Brace, you were saying like people had these like, you know, different glasses so they could drink their, you know, sour beers or whatever it was.
[00:31:24]  Like they were bringing a sort of like gourmand kind of, sorry, I hate to use that word, but it's appropriate here.
[00:31:31]  Sensibility or a kind of like artisanal, I don't know, like obsessiveness.
[00:31:41]  Specific taste.
[00:31:42]  Yeah, an obsessiveness that prior to this, you know, you see in wine, but wasn't that wasn't yet really hugely mainstream as it is now.
[00:31:50]  And like it was huge in Williamsburg and like the birth of the cocktail bar and the like bartender and the cocktail, you know, maestro being this kind of, you know, figure before then.
[00:32:02]  No, you're right about that, Liz.
[00:32:03]  And like one of the one of the reasons that I think beer and cocktails both hit in a way that wine didn't.
[00:32:09]  I mean, wine is like deeply associated with like sort of the striver upper middle class in the United States, right?
[00:32:15]  Like the idea of being knowledgeable about wine is a trope that dates back two generations, basically ever since the post, uh, the post-war era.
[00:32:25]  After World War II, you get GIs coming back.
[00:32:28]  This is the simplified version, but you get GIs coming back with a taste for European wine.
[00:32:32]  You start to see like importers really play to that, you know, taste.
[00:32:37]  That's where you start to, you know, 20 years later, you start to see Napa pushing into it really as, you know, for the first time.
[00:32:43]  Instead of, I mean, the gallows and like Mendochino, like they were making fucking jug wine, Carla Rossi, fucking night train shit.
[00:32:50]  Like American wineries were not like making like primo, like, you know, high-end bottles of wine or even like mid-shelf bottles of wine.
[00:32:58]  They were making Planck for the, for large part.

=== White Claw's Shake-Up (15:52) ===

[00:32:59]  But like that market starts to develop and you start to see it get more hoity-toity and more fancy.
[00:33:06]  Whereas beer, like, yeah, you can spend a lot of money on craft beer in 2010, but like you get a 22-ounce bottle of beer in 2010 that's like from one of the cool producers and like it's a fucking stout or whatever.
[00:33:18]  And it's still only going to be $18 or $20.
[00:33:23]  So these are attainable, and this is the way beer has always been in this country.
[00:33:27]  These are attainable like sort of luxury products that the average consumer can stumble into.
[00:33:35]  And even if they fuck up on their selection or they don't like what they've got or whatever, like it didn't put them out of house and home the way a bottle of wine can feel like this catastrophic misspend, you know?
[00:33:47]  Yeah, it's also like you know how to like judge a beer rather than like judge.
[00:33:52]  Like, you know, if I was, for instance, like open a bottle of wine and like smell it, I'd be like, I don't know what I'm smelling for.
[00:33:58]  I'm open a bottle of beer and I'm smelling like that smells like shit.
[00:34:01]  I'm going to drink it and get as drunk as possible in as great as great volume of disease as possible.
[00:34:06]  But now it's 2024, though, and the landscape of the drink, let's say the seascape rather, because it's more of a, it's a, it's a liquid, the seascape of drinking in booze has changed quite a bit because we had the great expansion of the craft brewery industry.
[00:34:24]  A million craft breweries blossomed.
[00:34:27]  Well, not all of them blossomed.
[00:34:29]  And then the market changed a little bit.
[00:34:31]  So it seems like where we're at now is like seltzers is the number one thing.
[00:34:36]  Dude, I think we're even like kind of on the on the downswing from seltzer at this point.
[00:34:40]  Yeah, like the seltzer industry, the seltzer segment is itself kind of going through a shaking out period.
[00:34:49]  Late last decade, you started to see the craft brewing industry, craft beer sales start to really slow down.
[00:34:57]  And there are a bunch of factors that go into this, but like you've heard the term zero before, like this idea that like money was very available for investments that maybe we didn't pencil out.
[00:35:08]  Like that started to sort of show signs of not paying the dividends that lenders wanted to see.
[00:35:14]  So capital access gets a little bit harder.
[00:35:17]  It was never easy for craft breweries, but it starts to get a little harder.
[00:35:21]  And I think from a drinker perspective, a lot of people like kind of got fucking tired of blowing up their palates with like huge IPAs and like candy stouts and things like that.
[00:35:34]  And they start to look for more sort of approachable flavors, certainly lighter stuff.
[00:35:41]  That's where Seltzer starts hitting really hard.
[00:35:43]  Like 2018, 2019 or so, you start to see White Claw come and truly to some extent, but you start to see White Claw really start to hit and really start to sell like fucking crazy.
[00:35:53]  And it's like everything that craft beer isn't.
[00:35:56]  And I think that value proposition was really attractive to people who had just spent the last 10 years getting really sort of like into and then over craft beer with the artisanal and the fucking local and the farm to table and like all of those things like started to be feel like played out.
[00:36:12]  And it's like, wait a second, I don't want to like do this fucking homework.
[00:36:14]  I don't want to like take like a political stance necessarily just to select which beer I want.
[00:36:22]  I just like want a fucking commodity that's going to taste the same every single time I go by it.
[00:36:27]  And it like tastes like the fruit that's on the label, right?
[00:36:30]  It's like, oh, it's a self-right exactly.
[00:36:33]  Cool.
[00:36:33]  Like, exactly.
[00:36:34]  Yes, exactly.
[00:36:34]  And it doesn't make me feel heavy.
[00:36:37]  And it doesn't have like 800 calories in it.
[00:36:40]  And it has, you know, like so many things.
[00:36:42]  It doesn't have that many calories in it.
[00:36:44]  White Claw sort of put the benchmark down of like 100 calories per can.
[00:36:48]  And that like becomes the threshold that like any brand really has to hit.
[00:36:53]  And beers can't easily hit that mark.
[00:36:56]  Micheloboltra, I think, is like 96 calories.
[00:36:59]  And it tastes like water.
[00:37:00]  I mean, like, it's, I don't say that to like rag on it.
[00:37:03]  There's tons of people who like it, but like it, if you put it next to even like a fucking Budweiser, it tastes extremely thin and watery.
[00:37:12]  There's just not an easy way.
[00:37:14]  Bring back B to the E. Do you guys think I should start drinking again?
[00:37:19]  Because now it's different.
[00:37:20]  Because now it doesn't make you feel, it's like not bad for you.
[00:37:23]  This is actually a reverse intervention.
[00:37:24]  Yeah.
[00:37:25]  Yeah.
[00:37:25]  Like you guys think, because I do, I will say sometimes when I go in those little funky stores, I see the buzzball is the only thing that I've been like, damn, I bet that's crazy.
[00:37:33]  Because it reminds me of the brain.
[00:37:34]  What funky little store are you going to do?
[00:37:36]  Like Wawa?
[00:37:37]  No, I don't go to a Wawa.
[00:37:38]  Where do they sell buzz balls?
[00:37:40]  They sell buzzballs at the fucking store.
[00:37:42]  They sell it at the store.
[00:37:43]  The store.
[00:37:44]  They sell it at the fucking store.
[00:37:46]  Stop.
[00:37:47]  Well, anyways, every time I walk by the buzzball, because it always in a fucking thing, I remember I was with my dad, who lives in the south, and I was at a fucking, they got a state liquor store in the state he lives in.
[00:37:58]  And we walked in there to get a gift for somebody, and not me.
[00:38:01]  And I look in and there's a giant thing of buzzballs of all sizes.
[00:38:04]  There's a giant buzzball that's like an orb.
[00:38:06]  And I'm like, that is tempting me in a way that is the equivalent of like a naked lady dressed in like Arabian Nights dancing.
[00:38:20]  But all this brings us to the current situation now, which is not super bright for craft brewing.
[00:38:28]  But we think we should go back to Sapporo a little bit.
[00:38:31]  So Sapporo is a venerable Japanese brand, which we've talked about on the show before.
[00:38:40]  They busted into the American market by acquiring a company called Anchor Brewing in 2017.
[00:38:49]  And, you know, as somebody in the beverage industry, you know, as a San Franciscan, I was like, damn, that's crazy.
[00:38:55]  But as somebody in the beverage industry, this was a pretty big deal, right?
[00:38:58]  Like they, they, like, Anchor had finally sold to somebody that wasn't just like, I think it was like two like random guys who kind of two liquor guys.
[00:39:06]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:07]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:08]  But this was like an actual beer company buying it and with kind of the hopes of like rescuing it from like a long but sort of slow downward slump.
[00:39:17]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:39:18]  So Anchor Brewing Company has been around since like the mid-1800s and it's kind of always hung in there.
[00:39:24]  It is incredibly historic.
[00:39:26]  It pioneers like a lot of the things that are now just sort of taken for granted in American brewing.
[00:39:32]  But by the early 21st century, it's sort of, you know, it's in disarray.
[00:39:40]  Fritz Maytag, the longtime and beloved steward and owner of the brand from 1965 to 2012, I want to say or so, when he sells to these interim guys, you know, he's getting old.
[00:39:55]  He's still alive, but like at that, at this point, he's whatever, 75.
[00:39:58]  He wants to retire and move on.
[00:40:00]  He sells it to these guys.
[00:40:01]  And craft beer has sort of been in its boom era, but Anchor being as old as it is, it has claim to some of the market, but really can't compete in the same way.
[00:40:11]  And when Sapporo comes along in 2017, they make they say a lot of the right things, right?
[00:40:17]  I mean, they're a sophisticated multinational corporation.
[00:40:20]  Like they understand, they seem to understand the stakes of the game and what people want to hear from them and what people want to see them do with Anchor because Anchor is a San Francisco and to some extent an American institution.
[00:40:33]  And it goes fucking poorly, as we've talked about before on this podcast.
[00:40:40]  Shockingly, this doesn't, this marriage.
[00:40:42]  Frazier shouldn't even tell me.
[00:40:43]  I think I did a good job.
[00:40:46]  Freeze, you did great, man.
[00:40:49]  You and all the other people.
[00:40:51]  And you know what?
[00:40:52]  I was working half that time with a fucking Planner's Ward on the bottom of my foot.
[00:40:57]  You guys try walking around with that thing in those big rubber boots.
[00:41:00]  It hurts.
[00:41:00]  And you were doing a podcast at the same time.
[00:41:02]  No, that was later.
[00:41:03]  But yeah, that was post-planner's ward.
[00:41:05]  But yeah, they buy it and they make a lot of, like, just from my memory, I mean, they were saying, like, hey, we're like, we're not, we didn't just buy this place to like brew Sapporo because that's what everyone thought.
[00:41:16]  Like, you bought this so that you could just brew your fucking beer here for the same reasons that like Stone opened a place on the East Coast so they could brew Stone out there.
[00:41:24]  Like you bought this because Sapporo is like a pretty, you know, it's a giant import beer.
[00:41:31]  It's a well-known brand and you think you can expand your market.
[00:41:34]  But they were saying to us at the same time, we're not doing that.
[00:41:37]  We're not doing that.
[00:41:37]  We're not doing that.
[00:41:38]  The question became, what the fuck are you doing?
[00:41:41]  Because they made basically every wrong decision one could ever imagine a company making.
[00:41:45]  Yeah, it turns out they didn't actually know what they were doing.
[00:41:47]  Yes.
[00:41:48]  That was what I was so astounded by, Dave, is when I was working there.
[00:41:51]  I was like, I always think that people who are like insanely rich, I'm like, they must, he must come.
[00:41:56]  They must always do it.
[00:41:58]  They can't be this stupid.
[00:42:00]  And they made every boneheaded decision, including hiring me, that a company could ever fucking make.
[00:42:06]  Yeah, they hired you, fucking outside agitator, to come in and stir up trouble.
[00:42:11]  You know, not to be clear, a lot of my longtime friends throughout my life worked at Anchor, and I myself was a teenage boy who drank a lot of it.
[00:42:21]  And so it was, it was, I needed a job.
[00:42:23]  Yeah.
[00:42:24]  So in 2019, Anchor Goes union with the ILWU Local 6.
[00:42:30]  In part, and I reported on this at the time, in part, the concern was that Sapporo maybe doesn't know exactly what it wants to do with Anchor.
[00:42:40]  And this is such an important institution.
[00:42:42]  We need to have a voice at the table.
[00:42:44]  We can't just trust that this big corporation is going to do right by Anchor.
[00:42:48]  Yeah, I think one of the things that really concerned people was Anchor changed the like, what was it, like 100-year-old fucking logo of Anchor.
[00:42:58]  The Anchor logo, which I have on my arm right here, is a classic, like, you know, not like Sailor Jerry style, but like a classic line drawing of an Anchor.
[00:43:08]  And Sapporo came in and changed it to look like a literal like Trader Joe's generic beer, which was no, it looks like Twisted Tea, man.
[00:43:16]  It wound up the rebrand, which did come, I think, after the union.
[00:43:21]  I think the rebrand was actually in 2021, but it was certainly indicative of the decision making or the lack of smart decision making that they were doing there.
[00:43:30]  The rebrand is a fucking disaster at Anchor.
[00:43:33]  It just doesn't look good.
[00:43:35]  It makes a mockery of this long history of this brand.
[00:43:38]  And I mean, look, to some extent, this is what corporations do when they acquire, you know, like proud local companies.
[00:43:45]  This is why people don't tend to take kindly to this type of corporate acquisition is because they know things are going to change.
[00:43:52]  And things did not go well at Anchor when Sapporo tries to start changing things.
[00:43:58]  And in 2023, they shut down Anchor sort of out of the blue.
[00:44:06]  And they try to claim that it was due to pandemic headwinds, quote unquote.
[00:44:11]  But I think my reporting pretty firmly shows that that was at best half of the story.
[00:44:18]  I mean, I did some pretty, I think, thorough reporting on Anchor at the time from the perspective of workers who were actually responsible for trying to implement some of the changes that Sapporo was making at the Petrero Hill facility.
[00:44:33]  And it basically they told me that Sapporo was trying to brew Sapporo at that facility, as everyone fucking worried about.
[00:44:41]  And even fucking crazier, as, you know, Brace, you said, like, the idea that like, oh, they must know what they're doing because they're this big, sophisticated corporation.
[00:44:51]  Somehow no one, it seems, at Sapporo did the due diligence to figure out if Anchor, which is a really fucking unique brew house and like not set up like, you know, like your modern brew house because it's ancient.
[00:45:04]  No one did the homework to figure out if this place could even brew the type of beer that Sapporo wanted to make.
[00:45:09]  And it turns out that they couldn't.
[00:45:11]  So yeah, that was a mess.
[00:45:13]  And it really demonstrated, I think, like a lack of, certainly a lack of like stewardship of an important cultural icon, but also just a lack of basic foresight, like the corporate due diligence that big firms like that are supposed to be fucking good at just never seemed to have taken place.
[00:45:31]  Yeah, I remember like talking to guys when I first got hired there, which was not that long, like pretty shortly after Sapporo bought it.
[00:45:38]  And I was like, can they even brew Sapporo here?
[00:45:41]  Like our places are like, it's a massive facility.
[00:45:43]  It's like a full city block.
[00:45:45]  Huge, huge, huge building.
[00:45:47]  But like, you know, it's, it's, it's a pretty different process than like brewing Sapporo.
[00:45:53]  And it's definitely not to like, and not to, you know, play on tropes here, but it's, it's true.
[00:45:57]  Like it's not to the exacting standards of the Japanese brewing industry.
[00:46:00]  They're not going to rock with it.
[00:46:01]  It's a little more loosey-goosey.
[00:46:03]  And everyone who worked there was like, we cannot brew Sapporo here.
[00:46:06]  It will just straight up not work.
[00:46:07]  That's why they bought us.
[00:46:08]  And like, I think they realize it.
[00:46:10]  And that's why they're going to like basically like run this thing into the ground.
[00:46:13]  Yeah, strip it for parts.
[00:46:14]  But once they bought stone.
[00:46:17]  Also, just as a, so as a, as a, as a beverage journalist, you would say, contra the New York Post, that it was not Brace Belden's fault that it closed.
[00:46:27]  I feel like I've proven with extensive reporting over five years, it was not Brace Belden's fault.
[00:46:34]  Unfortunately, my reporting has yet to come out, and I am still on the fence.
[00:46:39]  And actually, I think I have some internal documents and some chat logs that might prove otherwise.
[00:46:47]  Well, I remember when they bought stone or two, or they merged with stone, but they bought stone in 2022.
[00:46:54]  And that's when I was like, a lot of the guys I talked to at Anchor were like, this is, they don't give a fuck about us.
[00:46:59]  Like, stone is their fucking golden goose.
[00:47:01]  And they actually merged.
[00:47:02]  And it was called Sapporo USA when I worked there.
[00:47:04]  Now it's called Sapporo Stone, right?
[00:47:06]  Yeah, it's called Sapporo Stone Brewery.
[00:47:08]  There may still be Sapporo USA as like the shell company that's the Japanese subsidiary.
[00:47:14]  I don't know if that structure still exists, but for all intents and purposes, they're operating as Sapporo Stone Brewery in the U.S.
[00:47:23]  Now, let me ask you this.
[00:47:25]  These workers in Richmond, Virginia, right?
[00:47:29]  It's a deadbeat town.
[00:47:31]  They should be glad to have a job.
[00:47:33]  Richmond?
[00:47:34]  Richmond.
[00:47:35]  Actually, I love Richmond.
[00:47:36]  Richmond's pretty big.
[00:47:38]  There's 500, 600 people that live there.
[00:47:42]  It's a really important town.
[00:47:43]  I spent a lot.
[00:47:44]  Well, something maybe to you.
[00:47:47]  Oh, my God.
[00:47:48]  I don't even know what that is.
[00:47:50]  Which joke are you?
[00:47:50]  What's this joke?
[00:47:51]  This is now I'm implying that you are sort of like a neo-Confederate.
[00:47:55]  Okay, sorry.
[00:47:55]  That's what I do in there.
[00:47:58]  But no, Richmond, I love Richmond, actually.
[00:48:00]  I can't even pretend to talk shit on Richmond.
[00:48:02]  It's a great city.
[00:48:04]  But the workers there seem rather ungrateful for this, their jobs.
[00:48:08]  And why are they ungrateful?
[00:48:11]  This is the problem with workers.
[00:48:13]  They're just never happy, Brace, as you know.
[00:48:16]  Yeah, you know, they always want more.
[00:48:18]  They want a bigger piece of the pie.
[00:48:19]  So workers start organizing in September 2023, just about a month after Anchor is unceremoniously dumped into the hands of a liquidator by Sapporos USA in August 2023.
[00:48:33]  So workers pretty clearly saw what went down with Anchor and were like, oh shit, we are not going to be exempt here.
[00:48:41]  Like, yes, right now, this is the golden goose, but like, look how look how cursory the sort of shuttering process was for Anchor.

=== Crucial Workers Unite (10:17) ===

[00:48:52]  We need to protect ourselves.
[00:48:54]  So I think to some extent, like, one of the things that, or I know, because I've spoken to the workers on the drive here, stability Stability and concern for like corporate whimsy, right?
[00:49:08]  That like may cut against their favor one day the way it currently was cutting towards them was something that they wanted to hedge against.
[00:49:19]  And organizing is the way they chose to do that.
[00:49:23]  There's also just a matter of like Richmond is fucking booming.
[00:49:28]  And it's certainly after the pandemic had receded, really starts to hit a growth spurt that becomes really difficult to navigate for workers at the lower end of the pay scale, workers doing light manufacturing work, workers doing the type of work that breweries employ, especially a brewery like Stone.
[00:49:54]  The housing costs here are extremely expensive.
[00:49:56]  Nothing like San Francisco for the anchor workers, but the jump is enormous for people who used to work here and be able to afford to rent an apartment for like 400 bucks a month and like do whatever.
[00:50:09]  That's just not a reality anymore.
[00:50:11]  So they start to see the costs increase of living in Richmond as it goes through this population boom.
[00:50:18]  And that becomes a really urgent, you know, an urgent problem for them to solve.
[00:50:24]  And they look to the Teamsters as a way to solve that problem.
[00:50:28]  And well, how does Sapporo take this when they start this union push?
[00:50:33]  So they move in sort of in the background.
[00:50:36]  As anyone who's organized a union before knows, they are almost always started in secret.
[00:50:45]  And this is due to the fact that like while you have a federal right to organize, there are dozens of ways that a company can kind of stay sort of right within the gray area of legality while also firing you for any fucking reason they want.
[00:51:05]  Dave, would you say, in your opinion, as a journalist, that like a true G moves in silence?
[00:51:11]  Sure, you need me to say that for the podcast, Race?
[00:51:14]  I just intenting a speaker.
[00:51:15]  I've just spent five minutes waiting to come in as I have like shook my hand at him to be like, don't say it.
[00:51:20]  I know what you're going to say.
[00:51:20]  Would you just say, don't say it?
[00:51:23]  Would you just say that as a journalist?
[00:51:24]  Like you can phrase it however you want, but would you say like a true G moves in silence?
[00:51:30]  You can phrase that however you want, but would you say?
[00:51:33]  Would you say that?
[00:51:35]  That is the Fifth Amendment apply on this fucking podcast.
[00:51:38]  I'll just say this right now.
[00:51:39]  A true G moves in silence.
[00:51:41]  So if these guys, it was a silent G. If these little Richmond hustlers had their fucking, had their, had their heads in the game, which it seemed like they did, Sapporo probably didn't understand a word.
[00:51:50]  Plus, they were probably speaking in English.
[00:51:51]  At least when I worked in there, Sapporo USA had zero employees that spoke English.
[00:51:56]  And so it was actually very easy to get around them figuring it out.
[00:51:59]  But you know, they went with the Teamsters, which I thought was, well, it's East Coast, so ILW is not there.
[00:52:04]  And so my jurisdictional issues aside or are set to the side.
[00:52:10]  But Teamsters actually has organized other or other Sapporo-owned brands in North America are actually organized under the Teamsters, specifically Sleeman's in Canada, which was crucial in the anchor brewing, in the Anchor Brewing Drive, because I was actually able to get the contract that Sapporo had with the workers at Sleeman.
[00:52:32]  And I realized that people who had my job there were getting paid like $40 an hour and I was getting paid 50 cents above minimum wage.
[00:52:40]  In San Francisco during like the fucking tech boom of last decade.
[00:52:44]  Yes.
[00:52:45]  Yeah.
[00:52:46]  And so it does make sense for the for the stone guys to go with the Teamsters.
[00:52:50]  Teamsters also, I should say, did send a guy out the day after we announced our drive to like ask some of our workers, like, are you happy with your representation?
[00:52:58]  And we're like, well, I'll kill you if you come back here.
[00:53:01]  But no disrespect.
[00:53:02]  But some San Francisco Teamsters are not my friends.
[00:53:06]  But So it does make sense for them to go with them.
[00:53:11]  Yeah.
[00:53:12]  Plus, the Teamsters are really strong in the brewing industry more generally.
[00:53:16]  Like the Teamsters represent about 5,000 workers at Anheuser-Busch.
[00:53:19]  They represent at least 1,000 workers at Molson Coors facilities across the country.
[00:53:25]  So they're like, to the extent that anyone has organized the brewing industry in the U.S., like the Teamsters are right at the front of the line there.
[00:53:35]  So they have some expertise there.
[00:53:36]  But also more locally, like they're just strong here because there's a UPS facility here and there's, and that's a Teamster facility.
[00:53:45]  So, you know, I mean, you know, like unions are one local can be quite different than the next, even though they all belong to the same organization.
[00:53:55]  So Sapporo, they should not have been too happy to find that they had just washed their hands of the terrible, terrible organization Anchor who devilishly like deigned to even organize and then tank the company from the inside.
[00:54:12]  They get to walk away scot free.
[00:54:14]  Everyone thinks it was Brace Spelden's fault for ruining the iconic anchor brand.
[00:54:20]  True.
[00:54:20]  It maybe was, depending on who you talk to.
[00:54:24]  I've talked to a lot of people.
[00:54:26]  We'll move on.
[00:54:28]  So, but now Sapporo then comes to Richmond and they're like, great, new brand, new, you know, bright lights, big city.
[00:54:35]  We can do it all over again.
[00:54:37]  We're here.
[00:54:38]  We're ready.
[00:54:39]  And Stone says, not so fast.
[00:54:42]  They cannot be.
[00:54:43]  Yeah.
[00:54:44]  I think that's right.
[00:54:45]  I mean, so Stone's Richmond facility is big.
[00:54:50]  It's new.
[00:54:51]  It's modern.
[00:54:52]  It's in an industrial section of town where you don't need to worry about multi-million dollar condo owners, you know, like you do in Petrero Hill, who maybe aren't thrilled about the idea of allowing a brewery expansion.
[00:55:04]  Like Stone's facility here is big and it's in a place where they can expand even further and they can have trucks going in and out of there all 24 hours a day and they can put new tanks to brew even more beer, which Stone does.
[00:55:19]  So they, I think, you know, to the extent that I can editorialize about what they're thinking, because they don't talk to me.
[00:55:27]  They've only issued me boilerplate responses, which is fairly typical for corporations that are facing even like a scintilla of adversarial press coverage.
[00:55:38]  They just have no interest in participating.
[00:55:40]  And unfortunately, they get to do that.
[00:55:43]  That's their prerogative.
[00:55:45]  But, you know, I think it's reasonable to assume that, yeah, I mean, they think that they've got kind of the perfect setup.
[00:55:52]  Virginia is a right-to-work state.
[00:55:53]  It's harder here to organize than it is in California.
[00:55:56]  I don't know if they are worried about a union early on, you know, when they take over in 2022.
[00:56:04]  And I know that they're hopeful that they can make the Richmond facility that was built to Brewstone into their U.S. facility for brewing all of the flagship Sapporo beer that they can sell in the United States.
[00:56:21]  So this is a crucial part of their expansion plan in the U.S.
[00:56:36]  Well, I want to move a little towards Anchor again, back to San Francisco, because we mentioned here that Anchor was liquidated by Sapporo USA or Sapporo Stone in 20, basically a year ago.
[00:56:52]  a year and a couple months ago, which was pretty big news for a lot of people.
[00:56:57]  I mean, I can't stress enough, like Anchor is one of the few things that's like made in San Francisco, just flat out is one of the few things that's made in San Francisco, besides, of course, X of everything app.
[00:57:10]  Yeah.
[00:57:11]  But Blazer Glory.
[00:57:13]  Also, I believe I forgot about Blazor Glory.
[00:57:15]  Never forget about Blazor Glory.
[00:57:16]  I think that's mercifully moving to Austin, Texas, which would knock on fucking wood.
[00:57:23]  But, it was liquidated and there was a bunch of different offers.
[00:57:29]  I heard a lot of rumors.
[00:57:30]  They were selling both the land, which is worth a lot of money, like the building itself, the IP, and like the equipment.
[00:57:37]  And the great worry is that these things were going to be sold discreetly to different companies, right?
[00:57:44]  And the union was trying to put together an offer.
[00:57:47]  I think they were working with like some co-op organizations, but it was just the amount of money we were talking here was really, really, really high.
[00:57:56]  And it was kind of a long shot, although I'm very happy that they tried to take that shot until it was bought by a certain dairy mogul.
[00:58:06]  Big yogurt.
[00:58:07]  Big yogurt.
[00:58:08]  And I got to say this here.
[00:58:10]  This is a tough episode for me because due to they have coconut yogurt now.
[00:58:16]  I don't, but have you tried it?
[00:58:18]  No.
[00:58:18]  I always think to myself, every time I go to the store, I say, perhaps I should try it.
[00:58:23]  No.
[00:58:23]  And I think of you.
[00:58:24]  I have tried it.
[00:58:25]  I have tried.
[00:58:25]  There's like a lavender one that's good, but that's straight up paused me saying that.
[00:58:29]  But the is the, I do like it though, but I don't eat it.
[00:58:34]  A guy named Hamdi, I don't even know how to pronounce this.
[00:58:37]  And I kind of speak this language a little bit.
[00:58:39]  Hamdi Ulukaya of Trabani Yogurt came in and bought Anchor basically lockstock and fucking barrel.
[00:58:49]  What the fuck happened there?
[00:58:52]  It was a huge surprise.
[00:58:53]  Honestly, I had followed, I had been trying, I had been trying to, obviously, this is my beat.
[00:58:59]  So after breaking news that Sapporo was closing Anchor in July 2023, I got a ton of sourcing and leads about who might buy it.

=== Forbes Contributor Network Costs (02:31) ===

[00:59:09]  And I covered the liquidation process.
[00:59:11]  I spoke with the liquidators.
[00:59:13]  I spoke with experts who sort of understood how this process worked out.
[00:59:16]  And Brace is right.
[00:59:17]  Like it could have been split up.
[00:59:19]  And some people thought it was likely that it would be split up into selling the brand to one buyer, the land to another, and then the fucking, you know, the kettles, the equipment for parts, like for scrap metal almost.
[00:59:35]  Or, you know, a happier outcome would have been like donated to a museum.
[00:59:39]  But anyway, we don't have to worry about that because, yeah, in May 2024, after basically all of my leads had run dead, and I like, at that point, I was like, this thing's going to be sold, you know, for parts and it's going to be sad and there's going to be very little outpouring about it.
[00:59:56]  Hamdi Ulakaya sort of materializes from out of nowhere.
[01:00:01]  He's not based in San Francisco.
[01:00:03]  He doesn't, by his own admission, have any real strong ties to the city.
[01:00:08]  But somehow, I think he fucking read a Forbes article, which makes me want to kill myself.
[01:00:13]  Shout out Forbes.
[01:00:14]  Shout out Forbes.
[01:00:15]  I feel like that's all aggregated.
[01:00:17]  Forbes face.
[01:00:18]  Yeah, for me.
[01:00:19]  I will say, of all the publications that I secretly suspect of mostly being AI generated, Forbes is the top of the list for being 90% chap GBT written.
[01:00:27]  It does seem like they sell like fucking, you can write for the like Forbes contributor network and become like a thought leader in your industry.
[01:00:35]  It's like there's no journalistic standards.
[01:00:37]  There's no fucking cost.
[01:00:39]  Razicon did that, right?
[01:00:41]  How much does that cost, though?
[01:00:42]  Yes.
[01:00:43]  Do you know how much that costs?
[01:00:44]  I don't know.
[01:00:45]  There's different pay structures for like some of the contributors make money off Forbes, but it is like fucking bowls of soup.
[01:00:52]  It's like no money.
[01:00:53]  Like, if you get yeah, so but then, yes, they also sell access to like, like, you know, the top real estate agent in Atlanta who wants to claim that he like publishes thought leadership in Forbes.
[01:01:12]  Like, he like pays to publish like garbage blogs on Forbes and it comes and it's on forbes.com, like, which is the whole part of the whole problem.
[01:01:21]  Forbes has a has a newsroom.
[01:01:23]  They're union.
[01:01:24]  They're real journalists.
[01:01:25]  Like, they go out and report on rich people.
[01:01:28]  They don't do it the way I would necessarily would, but like, they're actually like doing it.
[01:01:32]  And then there's like just fucking guys who also are, and they're and the links are the same.
[01:01:39]  Right.
[01:01:39]  Yeah.

=== Hamda's Chobani Dream (07:11) ===

[01:01:41]  Um, but anyway, so Hamda Ulakaya, uh, yeah, he he encounters Anchor's story somewhere along the way.
[01:01:47]  Maybe it was a Forbes article.
[01:01:48]  Hopefully, it wasn't for my own sanity.
[01:01:50]  And he decides he wants to get involved.
[01:01:51]  And this is kind of part of his thing, his mythos.
[01:01:55]  And I think, you know, I say that intentionally because I think like the way he's built kind of his persona in the public eye is germane to what his, you know, certainly to this episode and also to what his intentions for Anchor are.
[01:02:10]  But he swoops in in May 2024 and he buys it outright, the whole thing, all three pieces, you know, the IP, the equipment, and the land.
[01:02:20]  And he says he wants to restore it to its former glory.
[01:02:23]  Well, let's talk a little bit about that mythos because I think you're right.
[01:02:26]  And him coming in as a kind of like savior for this like beloved institution kind of, like you're saying, fits in with how he positions himself and how the media kind of like, you know, talks about him in, you know, relative to other billionaire.
[01:02:44]  I mean, he's a billionaire.
[01:02:44]  He's a very wealthy man.
[01:02:46]  He built Chobani like by himself, basically.
[01:02:50]  I mean, up from, you know, buying a yogurt factory.
[01:02:53]  And then he has this whole story.
[01:02:55]  So maybe we can go into that a little bit because I think that's an important part of this.
[01:02:59]  Yeah, of course.
[01:03:00]  He, so he's a Turkish national and he immigrates from Turkey, I believe in 1994.
[01:03:09]  And, you know, there's a lot of, I don't know, borderline hagiography about him because as we'll get into, he's kind of presented himself and a malleable business press has done this bidding for him as one of the good ones, quote unquote.
[01:03:27]  So we hear a lot of really good little details about his arrival.
[01:03:31]  I don't, I don't, I can't say that they're not true.
[01:03:34]  I just, I read them with skepticism.
[01:03:36]  One is that he arrives in 1994 with $3,000 in his pocket, $3,000 in his pocket and just a small bag of clothes, right?
[01:03:46]  So this is kind of, there's a Horatio Alger type thing going on here where he emigrates.
[01:03:53]  He starts a Feta cheese business.
[01:03:55]  It's kind of a break-even business.
[01:03:58]  It's not nothing, of course, like the success he would later have with Chibani.
[01:04:03]  And in 2005, he finds this plant in upstate New York, this yogurt plant.
[01:04:10]  And he's smitten by it, I guess.
[01:04:14]  Like he sees sort of like what it could be.
[01:04:18]  And this is the part that never really makes sense.
[01:04:20]  I mean, he's obviously a very savvy businessman, as he's proven.
[01:04:24]  But, you know, and sure, I guess part of that means seeing things that other people can't.
[01:04:32]  The story like never quite, I feel like, like bears up under scrutiny.
[01:04:37]  It's like, yeah, man, but like, why?
[01:04:40]  Right.
[01:04:40]  Like, yeah, you're in the cheese.
[01:04:42]  It's not other than like yogurt.
[01:04:45]  Like, isn't that what everyone would see at the yogurt plant?
[01:04:47]  It's like, oh, what if we made yogurt here?
[01:04:49]  And he saw that, but like, well, he saw what you would make there.
[01:04:53]  Yeah, it's true.
[01:04:54]  Yeah, you're right.
[01:04:55]  Liz, this is why you will never be a successful CEO like myself.
[01:04:59]  Because when I look at, when I look at like, like, when I go to Detroit, for instance, because I buy property and sell it, like, I like fix up houses there and then sell them at like whatever, a small profit.
[01:05:08]  That's like my main job that I have.
[01:05:10]  But when I go into these places, like, I don't see like a depressed area.
[01:05:13]  I don't see fucking people without jobs.
[01:05:15]  I don't see a fucking dump.
[01:05:16]  I see beauty.
[01:05:17]  I see history.
[01:05:18]  I see stories.
[01:05:19]  And I see a future that has like mixed use.
[01:05:21]  I see a crumble cookies.
[01:05:23]  I see maybe even like a fourth wave style coffee shop.
[01:05:26]  And like Mr. Ulukaya here, I see a motherfucking, we're doing Greek yogurt.
[01:05:30]  Because I will say, yogurt, it does not agree with me due to my racial heritage.
[01:05:35]  But, but, but, why am I doing that today?
[01:05:38]  It's just you did it the other day, too.
[01:05:39]  It's one of those things, I guess.
[01:05:41]  Greek yogurt was not the lion in the American market that it was back then.
[01:05:46]  So he sort of struck gold with this shit.
[01:05:48]  But that's timing.
[01:05:49]  That's not his vision of yogurt.
[01:05:51]  Maybe he could see time in his vision like I can sometimes.
[01:05:55]  That's just timing and consumer sentiment.
[01:05:58]  Yeah, I think you're right.
[01:05:59]  I mean, like, there's reasons now that you can look back and you'll be like, damn, this was so smart for this, this, and that reason.
[01:06:04]  But like, hindsight's 2020, right?
[01:06:07]  Like, I think he got a good deal on the factory.
[01:06:10]  He reportedly paid very little money for it.
[01:06:12]  Some, some reports say he paid as little as $1,000 for it.
[01:06:16]  I mean, this thing was like basically like, you know, sort of in disrepair.
[01:06:22]  And he, he makes upgrades to the facility, of course.
[01:06:25]  But like, yeah, Liz, you're right.
[01:06:27]  Like, a lot of this was, he got really lucky, I think.
[01:06:29]  And Chibani, as a brand, as it would emerge, like, it takes off like a fucking rocket ship.
[01:06:35]  Like he's, I think by 2010, it does a billion dollars in revenue.
[01:06:41]  And by 2011, it's the biggest yogurt brand in the U.S. Like it's, there's this health halo, which people in the consumer package goods industry like to use that term, like health halo.
[01:06:52]  Oh, it seems healthy.
[01:06:52]  Oh, yeah, it is.
[01:06:53]  Yeah, I know.
[01:06:54]  We've talked about that in the Jared Fogel episodes.
[01:06:58]  Chobani was a way for getting Middle American mothers okay with Faye.
[01:07:03]  That's my, what I think.
[01:07:05]  Which, by the way, you do not want to hear me pronounce that shit.
[01:07:07]  But speaking of pronunciation and speaking of that kind of shit, because I do be calling it that Liz, but not, but as no disrespect to anybody, because it's all love.
[01:07:17]  I don't think you know what the name of the yogurt is.
[01:07:19]  I don't think you want me to say it.
[01:07:21]  I don't think that it would do our podcast many favors, but I will.
[01:07:26]  I'll say it after Dave gets off because you say it to me all the time in text message, calling me it.
[01:07:31]  But the Chobani is a Greek yogurt, which is funny because he is Turkish-born, although a Kurdish person.
[01:07:39]  Well, those are the same thing.
[01:07:40]  Oh, wow.
[01:07:42]  I'm just trying to get.
[01:07:44]  You would call them mountain Turk, perhaps?
[01:07:46]  No, we want him to.
[01:07:48]  I'm trying to manipulate him at the end of this episode, which he will never hear.
[01:07:52]  But people in Turkey actually don't like it because he calls it Greek yogurt instead of Turkish yogurt.
[01:07:56]  And I just want to say to the kind people of Turkey, nobody calls it Turkish yogurt anymore.
[01:08:01]  Nobody calls it Turkish yogurt.
[01:08:04]  And I got to say this just to myself.
[01:08:05]  He's selling that dairy factory for less than he paid for it if he had called it Turkish, Chobani, Turkish yogurt.
[01:08:13]  I got to say this.
[01:08:13]  Immediately out of business.
[01:08:14]  To the Turks and the Greeks, just all, I can bring you together because I can straight up barely tell the difference.
[01:08:20]  I told you, it's all Greek to me.
[01:08:22]  You guys are the same to me.
[01:08:23]  And you can take parts of one and take the other, but you guys are the same.
[01:08:26]  And you should form a superstate and kind of create your own third, like a different, you should create your own center of power in the world, a different pole there.
[01:08:34]  A Greek and Turkey united at last, I think, could change our shit.
[01:08:37]  Also, invade Macedonia, but Northern Macedonia, whatever you want to call it.
[01:08:40]  Anyways, anyways, anyways, he calls it Chobani.
[01:08:43]  It becomes a fucking big ass thing.
[01:08:44]  But what I knew about it, because I don't follow yogurt very much, but what I knew about it is he's like, yeah, like you said, he's one of the good CEOs.

=== Pro-Worker Choices? (15:38) ===

[01:08:52]  Like, oh, he, he rocks with his employees.
[01:08:55]  Like, he fucking, he lets them come to work drunk or the equivalent of being nice to that.
[01:08:59]  Like, he, they get paid good, and it's like a good place to work.
[01:09:02]  Am I, is that right or wrong?
[01:09:05]  I mean, I think like a lot of these types of sort of business reports on the company, there are grains of truth here.
[01:09:15]  I mean, I think if you, if you read sort of reporting on what the workers say about working there, it's true that, you know, the workforce is more diverse than it typically is in Utica outside of Utica, New York, right?
[01:09:27]  Like it's, it's not, you don't typically see a multicultural workforce in that Chobani you do.
[01:09:34]  I think it's also true that they get paid relatively well compared to other dairy production facilities where pay is quite low.
[01:09:45]  So there are parts of this that are true.
[01:09:47]  And I think that's good.
[01:09:50]  I don't, I see that as like an unallied good that there are companies that are willing to push that forward, both pay scale and culture and whatever.
[01:10:01]  But there also is an element of these talking points are like very polished.
[01:10:06]  Right.
[01:10:06]  And that doesn't, it doesn't, you know, oh, he's the only one who hires refugees and he doesn't care if there's language barriers.
[01:10:13]  And, you know, like he gives a bunch of stock, he grants a bunch of stock back to his employees.
[01:10:21]  Like some of it starts to, and maybe I'm cynical as a journalist who covers, you know, the American sort of like food and drink space, but that's always, I mean, you guys know, like, that's a fucking red flag, right?
[01:10:35]  If this is like, you always see these same talking points out there.
[01:10:40]  And it's always from the perspective of maybe if it's workers, it's always the same workers.
[01:10:44]  If it's not, it's usually from representatives of the company.
[01:10:48]  There's a bunch of people in the community, like low-level sort of mayors and city council members who are always willing to go to bat for this person.
[01:10:57]  And, you know, I think like some of the things that he does are clearly have ulterior motives that are gains for him as much as they are gains for his workers.
[01:11:10]  And I think, so, I mean, we've talked a little bit about this self-mythologizing.
[01:11:19]  His story is innately tied to not just Chobani's success as a business, but some of these sort of touchy-feely, you know, I'm a benevolent boss.
[01:11:30]  I'm a benevolent CEO.
[01:11:31]  He actually brands himself in a 2019 TED talk as the anti-CEO, right?
[01:11:37]  And he has the anti-CEO playbook, right?
[01:11:39]  And it's all about how like anytime you like think the way a CEO thinks, you're like actually doing bad for your customers and for your workers and you need to do the opposite of that.
[01:11:50]  And so that's there's obvious value to Hamdi Ulakaya as a person to sort of do some of these highly visible, highly publicized pro-worker quote unquote initiatives and behaviors at Chobani because you're able to kind of take that and turn it into content for yourself about how you're one of the good ones.
[01:12:17]  You're apart from your peers in the C-suite.
[01:12:21]  That's one way.
[01:12:22]  I mean, there are other tangible ways.
[01:12:23]  Like when He gives a bunch of stock.
[01:12:26]  I think he gives about 10% of his stock holdings in Chobani to his workers, which is amazing.
[01:12:36]  Some of them are going to become potentially millionaires because of that equity, right?
[01:12:41]  I mean, that's a big deal.
[01:12:42]  And that's an unallied good.
[01:12:43]  These are people who are like dairy manufacturing workers who, I mean, every path to the middle class has been closed off to them in upstate New York.
[01:12:51]  Like the fact that they are able to do this, like fucking great, man.
[01:12:55]  Like I can't say that that's bad, but what doesn't get reported nearly as much is that he was at that time, I think this is like 2017 or so, he was locked in a battle with his private equity funders, TSG capital partners, about like who controlled the company and the way, you know, sort of like the structure of leadership around the company was going to work.
[01:13:20]  He wanted to retain more control and at the very least didn't want TSG to be able to consolidate control.
[01:13:27]  And as the New York Post, which by the way, no fucking friend to, you know, or no, no enemy of America's C-suite, but as the New York Post reported, this opportunity that he, you know, sort of seized to give out all this stock to Chobani employees also had the happy outcome of diluting TSG's position as one of the investors in Chobani.
[01:13:55]  So it enabled him to retain control over the company.
[01:14:00]  He didn't really, he got all the positive, I mean, that was a win-win for him.
[01:14:03]  He got all this positive press and he managed to win out in a dogfight against a pretty rapacious private equity firm that has a notorious track record in consumer packaged goods.
[01:14:16]  So, you know, does that make it bad that people got stock grants?
[01:14:20]  No, I mean, it still makes it awesome, but like, let's not get it twisted.
[01:14:24]  Like, he, though he presented that, it is out of the kindness of his own heart.
[01:14:28]  Contemporaneous reporting at that time suggests that it was also because it benefited him.
[01:14:35]  Yeah.
[01:14:35]  What are his attitudes towards any kind of like organizing within Chobani or within any of its like partners?
[01:14:44]  So this is where I think you start to see the myth or the image, the charade kind of wear a little thin, right?
[01:14:54]  Because a slight curdling of the yogurt, perhaps.
[01:14:58]  Grace.
[01:15:00]  Sorry, man.
[01:15:00]  I'm sorry.
[01:15:01]  I'm sorry.
[01:15:02]  That was fucking disrespectful.
[01:15:04]  I'm sorry.
[01:15:05]  Disrespecting to yourself.
[01:15:07]  I disrespected me.
[01:15:08]  I'm sorry, Liz.
[01:15:09]  Sorry, I'm Chomsky.
[01:15:11]  Make eye contact with me.
[01:15:11]  I'm sorry.
[01:15:12]  And Dave, I'm sorry.
[01:15:16]  I always thought it was crazy, by the way, that Trobani opened like retail locations.
[01:15:20]  Like, who is going into the world?
[01:15:21]  They had a location so West Broadway.
[01:15:26]  There's a Soho Chobani?
[01:15:27]  I don't know if it's still there.
[01:15:28]  There was.
[01:15:29]  I think it closed.
[01:15:30]  There was one on West Broadway.
[01:15:32]  Yes.
[01:15:33]  Really expensive real estate, I would imagine.
[01:15:36]  I'd be using the Margiella tabbies like a spoon.
[01:15:40]  Yeah, I mean, you should probably buy them next door.
[01:15:42]  I mean, it was so bizarre.
[01:15:43]  Who goes?
[01:15:44]  It's not frozen yogurt.
[01:15:45]  You don't go to just like, I'm going to go get a yogurt.
[01:15:48]  That's weird.
[01:15:50]  Anyway, sorry.
[01:15:51]  So, right around this time, they're starting to sort of build up for an IPO.
[01:15:58]  And my sense is that potentially those brick and mortar locations were really more marketing exercises where it's like trying to make it look, yeah, exactly.
[01:16:07]  And like more, and also like with, you know, with trendsetters, like with the right people, quote unquote, like and Soho.
[01:16:14]  Gallery nest can't be.
[01:16:15]  I gotta be honest.
[01:16:17]  I'm looking at it right now.
[01:16:19]  The Chobani's Soho Cafe looks kind of fire.
[01:16:22]  It's the idea that you like put fruit and stuff and granola on your yogurt.
[01:16:27]  They got hummus and zatar.
[01:16:28]  They got a mixed berry.
[01:16:29]  Acai bowl.
[01:16:30]  They got a honey vanilla bowl.
[01:16:31]  Wow, that seems like they're totally expansive.
[01:16:33]  And it's in whatever.
[01:16:34]  You know this font?
[01:16:35]  You know that font?
[01:16:36]  The Chobani.
[01:16:37]  Is that the Chobani font there?
[01:16:38]  But it's like the, you can't even see this, Dave.
[01:16:40]  Fucking, it's a font that sweet creations.
[01:16:43]  Sweet creations.
[01:16:44]  I don't like that.
[01:16:44]  That's me having a baby.
[01:16:46]  But, but.
[01:16:48]  Sorry, go ahead.
[01:16:50]  Fuck sweet.
[01:16:52]  That came out of nowhere, and now we know what is on your mind.
[01:16:57]  Dave.
[01:16:58]  So when they, when they, you know, are confronted or when Hamdi Lokai is confronted with power being built outside of the structure that he controls, he doesn't respond maybe as scorched earth as other executives might.
[01:17:19]  But he doesn't, he doesn't, you know, take the opportunity to back organized labor and its fellow travelers either.
[01:17:30]  So one, I think, pretty illustrative example plays out in 2019 through like 2021 or so.
[01:17:38]  And they try to go for an IPO and I think 2021 and then they pull it back.
[01:17:43]  So this is a moment of huge change in the company.
[01:17:46]  And it's when you can imagine the forces of sort of raw, like, you know, capitalism in its most severe form are probably bearing down on the company because these are when investment bankers get involved and want to see every, you know, sort of scrap of paper about how much fucking EBITDA did you do in the last quarter.
[01:18:09]  And so this is a moment where like it may have been easier to run a friendlier, more pro-worker company at other points during Chobani's existence.
[01:18:19]  But when rubber meets road, You know, you have to kind of decide one way or the other.
[01:18:25]  We don't have any reporting from inside the company at that time, but we do have reporting from outside the company.
[01:18:32]  We have, you know, organizers who had been trying to organize New York's dairy farmers who are major vendors for Chobani, which consumes obviously a ton of New York dairy, to turn it into yogurt.
[01:18:49]  They'd been organizing since like 2019 at least.
[01:18:54]  And Chobani had an opportunity to do the right thing.
[01:18:59]  They had an opportunity to back their organizing drives, back their federally protected rights just to explore organizing drives.
[01:19:11]  This was a, you know, it's a massive firm.
[01:19:14]  And so individual farm owners that might otherwise be anti-labor might think twice before they run afoul of Chobani, who represents 90% of their customer base or represents 100% of their, you know, this is the only buyer of their milk.
[01:19:32]  They can throw their weight around in the market.
[01:19:34]  And this is an opportunity, you know, where they could have done so.
[01:19:37]  They declined to do so.
[01:19:38]  They decide not to.
[01:19:40]  And what would transpire over the course of the next couple years, I think, really demonstrates, if not like malice, you know, like actual deliberate harm, it certainly demonstrates, I think, like a slick way of approaching problems of collective action and problems of a corporate or anti-corporate power that demonstrates, I think,
[01:20:09]  a sense of sort of self-preservation and self-centeredness that doesn't come out nearly as clearly in some of the more friendly profiles of Ulakaya.
[01:20:19]  So what Chobani does is instead of backing farm workers' right to organize and backing the certification processes that they call for, you know, they're looking for fair trade type certifications.
[01:20:35]  Like you're only going to buy milk from farms that meet this certification level.
[01:20:39]  And workers have a preferred one.
[01:20:41]  I think it's called, and, you know, shout out to the folks who named this.
[01:20:45]  It's kind of a funny name, but like, it's called milk with dignity.
[01:20:51]  No such thing.
[01:20:52]  No disrespect.
[01:20:53]  No such thing.
[01:20:54]  No such thing.
[01:20:56]  I just, I don't know about that.
[01:20:57]  You drink about two gallons a day.
[01:20:59]  The thing is, it sounds right until you start to think of it as not a noun, but a verb.
[01:21:04]  And then you're talking about milk with dignity.
[01:21:07]  That's hard.
[01:21:07]  Have you ever milked anything?
[01:21:11]  Because it's fucking hard to feel like a man doing that shit.
[01:21:15]  That's not true.
[01:21:16]  I've done it.
[01:21:16]  I've done it.
[01:21:18]  But I fuck with peasants, so I shouldn't say that.
[01:21:22]  But they have this preferred certification process, and it's one that centers workers' rights and centers protecting organizing rights on farms where a massive amount of exploitation goes on in the U.S. economy that just goes completely undocumented and unobserved because the workers there tend to be, even if they are legal U.S. citizens, they're often not aware of their rights.
[01:21:50]  They're often not English as a first language.
[01:21:52]  All of the problems that you can imagine sort of as organizing challenges are present on the U.S. farm and certainly in dairy farms.
[01:22:01]  Anyway, Chobani instead backs this NGO called Fair Trade USA, which is sounds good.
[01:22:12]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:22:13]  We were just talking about the 90s craze of Fair Trade.
[01:22:18]  We were going to do it, man.
[01:22:19]  They had it all figured out.
[01:22:21]  The 10 logo.
[01:22:24]  We can't have that anymore.
[01:22:26]  After Y2K, it got to work.
[01:22:29]  We're doing unfair trades again.
[01:22:33]  And Fair Trade USA is a spin-off of Fair Trade International.
[01:22:38]  They're not the same organization.
[01:22:39]  Fair Trade USA has, I'm quoting here from the Workers Justice Center in New York, a quote, spotty record on respecting workers' rights to organize after the organization certified a Central American melon farm with a history of union busting and grave worker exploitation, quote unquote.
[01:22:56]  So like these are, there's evidence that maybe Fairtrade USA is whitewashing some sort of stock and trade worker exploitation.
[01:23:08]  And this is the organization that Chobani throws its weight behind instead.
[01:23:15]  And it's indicative, again, like it's this softer sort of, you know, we're not against workers.
[01:23:23]  We just want to make sure all voices get heard, right?
[01:23:25]  We just know that there are stakeholders, right?
[01:23:27]  This is stakeholder capitalism.
[01:23:30]  And it's tough because as a reporter who often writes about union drives, like that's a really compelling line to normies who aren't paying attention to this stuff.
[01:23:41]  Like people are busy.
[01:23:42]  People don't know how the fucking labor movement works.
[01:23:45]  People don't know how international trade works.
[01:23:49]  And so to hear a company like Chobani say something that's like, by contrast to like, you know, what Kroger Corporation says or whatever, like it does, it sounds much better.
[01:24:00]  It sounds more benevolent.
[01:24:01]  They're like, oh shit, like they're going out and like finding an organization to partner with to like do certifications, right?
[01:24:06]  The devil's in the details on this stuff.
[01:24:08]  And that stuff doesn't really come through.
[01:24:10]  It's very difficult to get a general audience to realize, like, oh, wait, like they've kind of found like a sham organization, or at the very least, like they were presented with an opportunity to full-throatedly represent workers' rights, even at the expense of their own, you know, short-term profits.
[01:24:28]  And instead, they chose this other thing.

=== Why They Care So Much (09:56) ===

[01:24:31]  Why did they do that?
[01:24:33]  Those questions don't always get asked.
[01:24:35]  And they don't, you know, and as a result, workers don't have their voices heard and don't have their rights protected in the way that a company like Chobani maybe claims it cares about.
[01:24:46]  I will say, though, right now is a perfect time to really cement your reputation.
[01:24:51]  I'm talking directly to you right now, Hamdi, to cement your reputation as one of the good, as you say in the TED talk, an anti-CEO, because he has purchased Anchor.
[01:25:04]  And I will say, from what I know, is that that news was actually, it's kind of the best case scenario, right?
[01:25:10]  Like it's not being bought out by like some crazy, you know, venture fund that's going to break it up or whatever.
[01:25:15]  It's like, okay, this is actually some echoes to Fritz Maytag, the CEO who bought it in like, what, 1960 something?
[01:25:23]  1965, yeah.
[01:25:24]  1965, the sort of like billionaire heir scion of the Maytag fortune.
[01:25:30]  He purchased Anchor with no real connection to the beer industry.
[01:25:35]  Although I think he was into wines at that point, or maybe that was later, and put a lot of care, a lot of money into it and rescued it and made it one of America's most flagship beer and certainly one of San Francisco's most beloved products.
[01:25:51]  Mr. Senor Chobani, it's, you know, it sort of echoes there, right?
[01:25:55]  Like, okay, we've got this rich guy who's coming in kind of on his little lonesome and purchasing this brewery, lock, stock, and barrel.
[01:26:02]  And so I know that a lot of the workers there who really treasured their jobs working at this place and who wanted to work there again were greeted this news with a lot of joy.
[01:26:13]  They're like, okay, well, not a lot of joy, but much less skepticism than perhaps.
[01:26:17]  Cautious optimism.
[01:26:18]  Yeah, sure, sure.
[01:26:20]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:26:21]  It is unfortunate that in the intervening year and some months, 14 months, there has been zero communication between the whatever holding company owns it now, but Ulukaya's people and between Anchor, as far as I know, and between the former workers at Anchor.
[01:26:45]  Yeah.
[01:26:45]  And it's not even a year, dude.
[01:26:46]  Like this just happened in May 2024.
[01:26:48]  So you're right.
[01:26:50]  Yeah, they sold it.
[01:26:51]  But I want to point out, yeah, you're exactly right.
[01:26:54]  So ILWU Local 6 still represents those workers.
[01:26:57]  They have a contract in place with Anchor Brewing Company, which is no longer a going concern.
[01:27:04]  But according to labor experts that I spoke with about two months ago, that typically wouldn't matter.
[01:27:10]  Like they, they, they ought to be still protected for those jobs when they come back.
[01:27:14]  Ulakaya goes to the San Francisco Chronicle and says right after acquiring this company that he really wants to bring all these workers back.
[01:27:24]  He wants to do right by this company.
[01:27:25]  He wants to do right by the people who make it special.
[01:27:28]  He very, very, you know, lukewarmly addresses the existence of Anchors Union, which to me was a red flag right off the rip because they have been front and center on this process.
[01:27:42]  As Brace mentioned earlier, you know, after the brewery gets handed to liquidators, they mount a long shot bid to try to raise money to acquire it themselves.
[01:27:52]  A lot of them really fucking care about this place, like honestly, to a point that like certainly is impressive, but also like a little crazy that like they're willing to kind of like work as hard at this to just get these jobs back.
[01:28:04]  They care about this shit.
[01:28:06]  And Ulakaya does not address the union.
[01:28:11]  He does not reach out to the union right off the bat.
[01:28:14]  To my knowledge, they have not had any, you know, sort of like extensive direct talks.
[01:28:18]  Although I know that the union issued him an open letter saying they were ready to work with him.
[01:28:23]  I know workers themselves have mounted a social media campaign to make it clear how much they care about Anchor and how much they want these jobs back to make it good.
[01:28:33]  And billionaires, like this guy's worth $2.5 billion, right?
[01:28:36]  Like, and to my mind, like, if you're ever going to give a billionaire a pass, like they get a very small pass, right?
[01:28:44]  Like, okay, he bought it in late May.
[01:28:46]  Sure, maybe he didn't in his first interview say, I'm going to bring back the unionized workforce.
[01:28:51]  All right.
[01:28:52]  We'll give him a pass.
[01:28:53]  He's had plenty of opportunities to clarify sins.
[01:28:55]  I reached out to him when I was reporting out a column earlier this year about Anchor coming back and asked if he would make his position clear.
[01:29:05]  He never responded to me.
[01:29:06]  Like the business press is not going to put this guy's feet to the fire, but like he can come find independent journalists who will and answer questions honestly about what he intends for workers.
[01:29:19]  And I mean, at this point, we're three months later and workers still haven't heard from him, still don't know if he's going to come back.
[01:29:25]  And I think at that point, like you're well out of the grace period for someone with the level of resources and fucking essentially like infinite budget, you can't really get a pass on that stuff.
[01:29:37]  I think it's pretty clear whether or not he does ultimately hire these workers back.
[01:29:42]  He's hiring them back on his terms, right?
[01:29:44]  If he ever does.
[01:29:45]  And again, this is kind of like the weird sort of gray area where to a lot of people, they'd be like, well, it's awesome that he brings them back at all.
[01:29:53]  It's like, well, yeah, man, but like they, they, my mind, like the workers deserve to be treated with respect for how much they've put into this institution and care about it and have tried to keep it, you know, going during this tumultuous time.
[01:30:08]  And we haven't seen him repay that effort with even the respect it deserves.
[01:30:16]  Not to forget about the money, but just like to acknowledge that there's another party here.
[01:30:23]  And so I think like when we talk about stone unionizing, some of the issues are really not about economic stuff.
[01:30:31]  It's not about money and healthcare.
[01:30:34]  Certainly those things are really important.
[01:30:35]  I don't want to say the workers don't want better health care and better pay and whatever.
[01:30:39]  They also just want some fucking dignity, man.
[01:30:42]  They want to be treated like equals and peers.
[01:30:46]  And you hear this a lot outside of the beer industry.
[01:30:49]  But within the beer industry, people often talk about sort of craft breweries being a family.
[01:30:54]  And I think everyone's kind of waking up to the idea that just this is a business just like anything else.
[01:31:00]  And whether it's at Anchor, it's at Stone or it's at Chibani outside of the beer industry.
[01:31:04]  Like the things that matter are no matter how benevolent the boss is, if they're, you know, if he doesn't have a union in place, if there's no contract in place, it's always going to be on terms that are favorable to him, whether or not they're favorable to you.
[01:31:30]  Liz, I actually have one final message for Hamdi, Mr. Chobani.
[01:31:38]  Big yogurt man?
[01:31:40]  We should just call him the big yogurt man.
[01:31:41]  The big yogurt man.
[01:31:43]  But you could be a, you could be a, you could be a righteous hero riding in to save the day in San Francisco.
[01:31:48]  I want to say that.
[01:31:49]  I know, I know for a fact that he has not responded to the union's entreaties and that despite Shimon Walton and London Breed putting you guys both on black, well, London Breed more so.
[01:32:02]  But London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, kind of campaigned for a little bit because she's running for re-election.
[01:32:07]  She campaigned a little bit on like, I'm bringing Anchor back.
[01:32:10]  First of all, you had nothing to do with it.
[01:32:11]  And second of all, your job at this point should be to broker a fucking talk between the union and Chibani guy.
[01:32:20]  Big yogurt.
[01:32:21]  Big yogurt.
[01:32:21]  Like, that should be your only job.
[01:32:24]  But she is not doing that whatsoever.
[01:32:25]  She's making fucking classic London Breed vacuous public statements that she backs away from.
[01:32:31]  But this is to Mr. Big Yogurt.
[01:32:32]  I had to write this down because it's a little rusty.
[01:32:38]  Hevale men emast.
[01:32:40]  Navamin breis Belden.
[01:32:43]  Es dijmine du lette turkem.
[01:32:46]  Heft sal bere es lesker boom.
[01:32:49]  Es chabata kara Bere ye anker im naha havalen min ji nu vekar biken.
[01:33:01]  He says he left Turkey because of language.
[01:33:04]  I mean, there's a lot of stories here.
[01:33:05]  But his thing is he left Turkey because of language rights of Kurdish people, which is a big issue in Turkey.
[01:33:11]  If you speak Kurdish there, it is like literally you can get thrown in jail in many cases.
[01:33:16]  Like just speaking it to another fucking person.
[01:33:18]  It's fucking crazy there.
[01:33:20]  My brother, I sort of, I am one of probably five white boys in this world that can speak your language a little bit because there's not that many words in it, to be honest.
[01:33:31]  It would be harder if there were more.
[01:33:33]  I feel like CEO to CEO.
[01:33:35]  That's what I'm saying.
[01:33:36]  You guys could come together.
[01:33:38]  That's what I'm saying.
[01:33:39]  You know, I mean, of all places, San Francisco is like the most immigrants are welcome here place.
[01:33:44]  Yes.
[01:33:45]  Let's get it going.
[01:33:47]  Listen.
[01:33:47]  And by that, I mean it's friendly to the people who have those types of signs outside of their small businesses.
[01:33:52]  When we were there, when we were there.
[01:33:54]  They sell $600 dresses that no immigrant could afford.
[01:33:58]  A lot of people say, a lot of people in certain Kurdish political movements refer to Abdul O'Jalan as Serak.
[01:34:04]  That's the leader.
[01:34:05]  But Serak also means a little bit is the boss.
[01:34:09]  So Sirok to Sirok.
[01:34:12]  We need to have a conversation.
[01:34:13]  And perhaps you could pour some Sirok while you have that meaning.
[01:34:19]  I do drink non-alcoholic Siroq frequently.
[01:34:21]  Non-alcoholic.
[01:34:22]  Non-alcoholic Sirok.
[01:34:23]  And non-alcoholic Gold Schlak.
[01:34:24]  Sirok is vodka, right?

=== Non-Alcoholic Sirok (01:01) ===

[01:34:27]  Don't look at me.
[01:34:28]  Yeah, I think, yes, I think it is.
[01:34:30]  Like it's a clear alcohol.
[01:34:32]  But I just drink that non-alcoholic.
[01:34:34]  And I drink non-alcoholic goldflager too.
[01:34:37]  Like, that's my main.
[01:34:38]  That's just water with gold.
[01:34:39]  With gold in it.
[01:34:40]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:34:40]  And I suck on nuggets too.
[01:34:42]  Like, I suck on gold nuggets a lot.
[01:34:43]  I sleep up potatoes and chug that.
[01:34:45]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:34:46]  Oh, puree.
[01:34:49]  But listen, I wish, you know, we are both, we both speak this funky little language.
[01:34:54]  Let's talk.
[01:34:55]  Let's have a conversation.
[01:34:56]  Yeah, let's make it happen.
[01:34:58]  I think the word is acheften, because that's how you say it.
[01:35:00]  If any of you people who know this guy are listening, hit the tip line.
[01:35:03]  Hit the tip line.
[01:35:04]  Hit the tip line.
[01:35:05]  Let us know.
[01:35:06]  We'd love to know more about Mr. Big Yogurt Man.
[01:35:09]  And I would love to try yogurt and see what that does to my belly.
[01:35:15]  My name is Brace.
[01:35:16]  I don't have IBS.
[01:35:17]  It's just something's wrong with me.
[01:35:19]  You'd think I would by looking at me, but I don't.
[01:35:21]  All right.
[01:35:21]  I'm Liz.
[01:35:23]  We're, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[01:35:26]  And this has been Truan.
[01:35:28]  We'll see you next time.